How 

to Build up 

Furnace 

Efficiency 



Jos .W. HavjS 

COMBUSTION ENGINEER 



How to Build Up Furnace 
Efficiency 

A Hand-book of Fuel Economy 



BY 



JOS. W. HAYS 

Combustion Engineer 



Author of 

' The Chemistry of Combustion," •' Combustion and Smokeless Furnaces, 

" How to Get More Power from Coal," "How to 

Stop the Fuel Wastes," etc. 



SEVENTH EDITION 

Revised and enlarged (twenty-fifth thousand) 

PRICE, $1.00 
Post-paid to any part of the world. 



JOS. W. HAYS, Publisher 

ROGERS PARK, CHICAGO, U. S. A. 

1914 



TJ3Zo 
.H-58 



COPYRIGHT 1914 

By JOS. W. HAYS 

All rights reserved,— 
including the rights of translation 



FB 27 J9I4 

©CI.A362690* 







HOW TO BUILD UP FURNACE EFFICIENCY 
(In Five Reels) 



Why Your Fuel is Wasted 6 

How Your Fuel is Wasted 27 

How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes 46 

How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes ......... 69 

How to Keep the Wastes Stopped 99 



PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION. 

In the early part of 1908 the author tendered a manu- 
script to the editor of an engineering magazine. It was 
returned with the following comment: 

"Your paper is too technical. We get more technical articles 
than we can use. We want practical articles written in a pop- 
ular way and we can't get them. Cut out the high-brow stuff 
and let us have something that the great mass of our readers 
can peruse with interest and profit." 

The result of this advice was the first edition of "How 
to Build Up Furnace Efficiency", published in 1908. It 
was brought out with many misgivings. Was it really 
possible to treat the rather technical subject of combustion 
in a really popular way, — something that had never been 
attempted by any one before? Would the public want such 
a treatment even if the treatment were successful? These 
questions were not long in being answered. The first 
edition was exhausted, almost as soon as the announcement 
of publication was made. Succeeding and larger editions 
followed the first one. The book has now T been out of print 
for more than a year and a wT>rd of apology is due to the 
many people who have ordered copies without being able 
to get them. 

This edition has been held until the author could find 
time for the rather laborious work of revision. Many 
things were omitted in the previous editions that should 
have been said and some things were said that might have 
been omitted. There were no illustrations and that was 
a mistake. In the present edition, sufficient charts, dia- 
grams and illustrations are used to make clear some of the 
things that it is hard to explain in the printed page. Cer- 
tain instruments and apparatus designed by the author 
are illustrated. In showing these it is not intended to dis- 
parage other apparatus of like character. The illustrations 
are given for the sole purpose of showing the "tools" that 



Preface. 3 

the author has used in prosecuting combustion studies and 
in working out specific furnace efficiency problems in many 
plants. 

It is in no spirit of self-flattery that the author refers 
to the past success of his book. If credit is due any one 
it belongs to the editor who offered the advice above 
quoted. The author feels that a real service is being 
performed in passing this advice along to other writers. 
Let us stop writing for technical men who are already 
well grounded in all the theory of engineering. There are 
relatively few of such men as compared with the great 
multitude who want results first and who are content to 
let theories rest until results have been accomplished. Treat 
the engineering subject, in a really popular way and your 
book will be read by appreciative thousands. Treat it in 
a really technical way and it will be read by a few hundreds. 

Very little is said in this book relating to the theory of 
combustion. I have treated of that elsewhere* and with as 
much lucidity of explanation and illustration as possible, 
giving to the discussion of theory the same general style 
of treatment that is here given to the discussion of practice. 

In the present edition of "How to Build Up Furnace 
Efficiency" as in the previous ones, the sole effort has been 
to show the Manager, Superintendent, Engineers and Fire- 
men of the power plant how they may proceed at once to 
actually work a real reduction in the coal bills. To this 
practical end no understanding of theories is necessary. The 
unlettered fireman may become an expert flue gas analyst 
and reach the very top notch of efficiency in the combustion 
of fuel without knowing or caring what the atomic weight 
of carbon may be or why one atom of carbon unites with 
two of oxygen to form the gas C0 2 . It has been repre- 
sented and it is generally understood that the contrary is 
true. No more mischievous representation was ever made 
with reference to any engineering proposition. It is costing 
the power plants of the country millions of dollars. The 
average steam plant wastes a quarter of its fuel. It will go 



*See "The Chemistry of Combustion" 4 Vols. — Published 
by the Author. 



4 Preface. 

on wasting that quarter until it is recognized that the men 
to stop the waste are the ones who are doing the wasting. 

To burn coal or any other fuel economically is mainly 
a matter of method and as the method to be used varies 
with the character of the fuel and the conditions under 
which it is to be burned, the use of certain apparatus to de- 
termine the proper method is necessary in every power plant. 
It would be, indeed, unfortunate if the apparatus called 
for special skill or special knowledge on the part of the 
user. Any man who can read a scale and watch the flick- 
ering flame of a tallow candle is qualified to bring any 
boiler furnace up to the highest state of efficiency consistent 
with the fuel and the furnace equipment. It will not be 
disputed that your fireman is able to read a thermometer 
and tell you how cold or how hot it may be in the boiler 
room, or that he is competent to use . platform scales and 
weigh your coal. It is not considered that as a preliminary 
to using the thermometer one must understand the involved 
mathematics on which the science of thermometry depends 
or that as a preliminary to weighing a barrow of coal one 
must be able to explain the laws of the lever discovered 
by Archimedes. You are familiar with scales and ther- 
mometers and you go ahead and use them. You are not 
familiar with draft gages and gas analyzers, — hence you 
believe that a diploma from a technical school is necessary 
before you can use them. 

Every statement and recommendation made by the author 
has been proved by actual experiment and practice to the 
satisfaction of many people. Try the methods suggested 
before you pass judgment upon them. 

The author feels called upon to apologize for the fre- 
quent use of the pronoun "I" in the pages that follow. 
The reader must understand that every line of the book 
has been written right out of the writer's personal ex- 
periences and in setting these forth the pronoun in the 
first person has obtruded itself repeatedly. 

The author does not claim to be "the law and the 
prophets' ' on the subject treated. The reader must take 
the writer's opinions and experiences for what they are 
worth upon their face. 



Preface. 5 

Anecdotes have been liberally used throughout the book 
for purposes of illustration and in deference to these the 
author has followed a narrative style of writing which it 
is hoped may assist in sustaining the reader's interest until 
he has finished the book. 

Combustion is a dry subject when considered as an ab- 
stract proposition. It is not a dry subject when "human 
interest" is injected into it. It even has its humorous phases. 

The author believes that the methods of "spotting" and 
stopping fuel wastes described in this book are extremely 
simple. They may not appear so to the reader. It is diffi- 
cult to describe a very simple operation to a person who is 
entirely unacquainted with it and in preparing the book the 
author has assumed that the reader is not familiar with the 
subject discussed. It is quite probable that many persons 
reading the book are better grounded in both the theory and 
the practice of the matter than the author. To such as 
these no apology is offered, because the book is not written for 
them. 

The author confesses to the use of rather unvarnished 
language in some places and he knows that the Manager 
and Engineer will accept his criticisms with the same good 
nature in which they are offered. 

JOS. W. HAYS, 
Rogers Park, Chicago, U. S. A. January 2, 1914. 



Never Read a Book 
Until You Have Read 
the Author's Preface. 



How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency 

CHAPTER I. 
WHY YOUR FUEL IS WASTED 

The purpose of this book is to show WHY, HOW and 
WHERE fuel is wasted in your boiler room. Having 
shown the causes of loss specific means of stopping the 
wastes will be suggested. A diagnosis of the sick man's 
case will not cure him. There must be a prescription fol- 
lowing the diagnosis and the actual taking of the medicine 
must follow the prescription. 

The sickest thing about your factory plant is the boiler 
room. You have been so busy putting the "prod" into 
production that you have allowed the boiler room to look 
after itself in its own way. And the result is exactly what 
might be expected in such circumstances. You are wasting 
just about a quarter of your fuel. When I say "you", I 
am referring to the average steam power plant and when 
I say a "quarter of your fuel" I am referring to the pre- 
ventable wastes that occur in the actual burning of the coal. 
I am not including the necessary heat losses which are con- 
siderable. I am not including the losses chargeable to the 
boiler proper as distinct from the furnace, such as the great 
waste due to scale, improper baffling etc., or the loss due 
to soot which should be charged jointly to the furnace and 
boiler. If we add these other wastes to the 25 per cent 
loss that must be charged against the fireman and the fur- 
nace the total will be a staggering figure. I have treated 
elsewhere* at some length of these "other wastes" and we 
shall be reasonably occupied in this book if we do justice 
to the subject of furnace efficiency and allow the boiler for 
the time being to look after itself. Something will be said 
about soot and scale but with these exceptions the book 
will stick to its title, "How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency". 



*See the magazine publications of The System Company, 
Chicago. 

6 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. J 
Fuel Wastes Between the Mine and the Machine 

Prevent- Non-pre- 

able veritable 

losses losses 

DIRECT FUEL WASTES B. T. U. B. T. U. 

1 Lost — By weather waste between mine and factory 290,000 

2 Lost — In handling at the plant 290,000 

3 Lost — In the ash — non-preventable 284,200 

4 Lost — In the ash — preventable 1,136,800 

5 Lost — By radition — non-preventable 284,200 

6 Lost — By radition — preventable 852,600 

7 Lost — By incomplete combustion 204,908 

8 Lost — In chimney to maintain draft — non-prevent- 

able 3,410,400 

9 Lost — On account of air leakage in furnace and 

boiler setting — preventable 2,842,000 

10 Lost — On account of air excess drawn through 

grates — preventable . . . . 2,842,000 

11 Lost — Due to heating moisture in air and coal 426,300 



Totals 8,168,308 4,695,100 

INDIRECT FUEL WASTES 
HEAT ENERGY LOSSES 

12 Lost — Due to short circuiting of gases in gas pas- 

sages of boiler 322,732 

13 Lost — Due to soot on heating surfaces 1,126,561 

14 Lost — Due to scale in boiler 1,452,293 

15 Lost — Due to incorrect correlation of load to draft 1,116,800 

16 Lost — Due to inability of boiler to reduce tem- 

perature of gases below that of the steam in 

boiler 1,280,907 

17 Lost — Due to leakage of water and steam 216,685 

18 Lost — Due to friction and radiation in steam 

pipes — non-preventable 216,685 

19 Lost — Due to friction and radiation in steam pipes 

— preventable 866,742 

20 Lost — With engine exhaust 7,627,331 

21 Lost — Due to cylinder condensation and radiation.. 715,063 

22 Lost — In friction at engine — non-preventable 119,177 

23 Lost — In friction at engine — preventable 59,588 

24 Lost — In transmission from engine to machine — ■ 

non-preventable 231,000 

25 Lost — In transmission from engine to machine — ■ 

preventable 231,000 



Totals 6,107,464 9,475,100 

Grand Totals 14,275,772 14,170,200 

Totals of all losses preventable and non-preventable. 28,445,972 B. t. u. 
Delivered to the machine 554,028 B. t. u. 



Received from mine 29,000,000 B. t. u. 

Note — One ton of coal at the mine is assumed to contain 29,000,000 
British Thermal Units. The items show where the losses occur and the 
relative sizes of same in average boiler and engine practice. 



8 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

I use the expression "Build Up" because a really con- 
structive process is involved. There is a place to begin, a 
plan to be pursued and an end to be attained. If you do 
not start in the proper way at the right place you will never 
have efficiency in your boiler room. And after you get 
efficiency if you do not follow the proper method you will 
not be able to keep it. Your plant will "back-slide" if I 
may borrow that term from "Billy" Sunday. I wish to 
make it very clear that it is one thing to "attain" efficiency 
and quite another thing to "maintain" it. 

My statement that a quarter of the coal is needlessly 
wasted in burning may be challenged by some people. I 
shall not take it back; I have data covering hundreds of 
power plants and I can prove it. It is always dangerous 
to write a statement which on its face appears improbable. 
However reasonable your other statements may be the one 
that sounds extravagant may queer all of them. The reader 
is asked to accept that estimate of 25 per cent as applying 
to his own power plant until he has made the investigations 
suggested in this book and proved to his own satisfaction 
that his own plant is an exception to the general rule. 

Is one quarter of your annual coal pile worth saving? 
It is a waste of good paper to print such a fool question. 
Of course it is. Every cent that the big pile of fuel repre- 
sents was skinned from the dividend account. Just figure 
a moment. One thousand dollars thrown away in your 
boiler room must be replaced by another thousand earned 
from your business. That thousand dollars earned means 
something in volume of orders and volume of output. And 
if your total coal bill is only four thousand dollars per 
annum you are a relatively small bore institution. One large 
factory in Illinois made an actual saving of $73,000 the 
first year that the methods to be described in this book 
were employed in its boiler room and that year the plant 
earned its first profit. 

The big industries of the country have made a discovery. 
They have learned that the profits of the present depend 
very largely upon the practice of economies and that the 
profits of the future will depend entirely upon such practice. 
They are going after savings in all departments while many 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 9 

of the smaller manufacturers have yet to learn that there 
is such a word as "economy'' in the dictionary. This wak- 
ing up in the big industries is one of the reasons why big 
business is as big as it is and why the big fellows are eating 
up the little ones. I do not mean to say that all of the big 
manufacturing industries are really economical in the use 
of fuel. The majority are extremely wasteful. I do mean 
to say that the. big enterprise is beginning to scrutinize its 
coal account and supervise its boiler rooms. 

When our battleships made their celebrated trip around 
the world it was discovered by the fleet engineer that cer- 
tain of the vessels were much more wasteful of fuel than 
others. There was nothing like uniformity in the coal con- 
sumed per knot steamed, even among ships that were almost 
the exact duplicates of each other. There was a difference 
of 20 per cent in the coal consumption of certain sister 
ships. Here was food for thought and the Bureau of Steam 
Engineering began thinking. 

The following is quoted from an article by Lieut. Com- 
mander W. B. Tardy, U. S. N., published in the Engineer- 
ing Magazine: 

"This recently inaugurated activity has already resulted in the installa- 
tion of pyrometers and gas analysis apparatus on board all ships ; has 
caused the building or improving of fire-room timing devices; has caused 
a study of combustion and firing problems which has led to a location and 
elimination of nearly all the air leaks in furnaces and boiler settings, the 
determination of the proper amount of coal for a charge at various speeds, 
the correct firing interval, the correct normal opening of damper and fur- 
nace and ash-pan doors when fires are not being replenished or worked; 
has demonstrated the saving of fuel possible by manipulating the same 
and ash-pan doors when coal is being fired. 

"On January 1, 1908, the average battleship knots per ton of coal fired 
was 2.88; on July 1, 1910, this average was 3.77 with ships 20 per cent 
larger on the latter date than on the former date." 

The battle-ship now steams 31 per cent farther on a ton 
of coal than in 1908. This is equivalent to an actual fuel 
saving of about 24 per cent as an average for all ships. The 
improvement on some of the ships must have been far in 
excess of these figures. 

I might go on indefinitely with these illustrations showing 
what it is possible to do and what is actually being done 
to decrease the primary cost of power. Some of the smaller 
plants furnish illustrations even more remarkable than those 
offered by the big ones. 

In a small Ohio town there are two small factories. 



io How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

They manufacture the same kind of product. The larger 
of the two plants burns one ton of coal per day and the 
smaller burns seven. In a Southern city there are two ice 
plants. One gets three tons of ice from a ton of coal and the 
other gets ten tons. The ten ton man is getting rich and 
buying more ice plants. Some day he will buy the piddling 
three ton plant and put it on a ten ton basis. 

Power is the largest single item of expense in most manu- 
facturing industries and fuel represents about 70 per cent 
of the total cost of power. And the price of fuel is going 
up. Nothing short of the discovery of a new source of 
power can stop the rising tendency of coal prices. You 
face the grim facts of sharp and merciless competition and 
of increasing fuel costs. The alarm clocks are going off 
in other establishments and it is time for you to wake up. 
If you sleep too long, waking up won't help you. The 
other man will be so far ahead in the race that you can 
never overtake him. Several bricks have recently been taken 
out of our tariff wall and every brick removed necessitates 
an increase in the efficiency of American production. Europe 
reached and passed a point years ago that we are just now 
approaching, — the point where industrial existence depends 
upon industrial efficiency. And, in the last decade, Europe 
has made longer strides in industrial progress and more 
of them, than the United States. It hurts our pride to 
admit it, but the facts are very obstrusive. In the metal- 
lurgical industries, for example, we are just now adopting 
methods that had become standard in Europe five years ago. 
The old world has carried the weight of its crushing arma- 
ments and has passed America in the rush for the world's 
markets. But there is comfort in the fact that American 
initiative coupled with the efficiency spirit that is now sweep- 
ing our country will get us away in time from the position 
of tail-enders. 

Much just criticism has been leveled against the present 
propaganda of "scientific management". There is, in fact, 
a lot of "fish" in much of the efficiency talk and a great 
deal of "con" in much of the economy talk, especially where 
the "efficiency" and "economy" men have something to sell 
in the way of service or apparatus. The quacks and ex- 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 1 1 

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Chart showing why the cost of coal has risen and will 
continue to rise. 



12 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




What you pay for coal 




What you pay for wages, 
repairs and incidentals in 
the boiler room ^^ 




What you pay for wages, 

repairs, supplies, etc., in 

the engine room 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 13 

tremists are hurting this movement as they have hurt all 
others. And yet, notwithstanding the "fish" and the "con" 
of it, "scientific management" in its real and its broad sense 
is the most important industrial fact of the present century. 
One proof of this is that both big and little business are 
going in for it. "Scientific management" means more than 
"motion studies" and the speeding up of workmen. It 
means anything and everything that tends to make a dollar's 
worth of material, of time or of effort yield more results 
than it ever yielded before. A real revolution is in progress 
and it is good to be a participator in it. 

There was a time when the manufacturers of this country 
were not interested to any serious degree in the subject of 
economy. Things were too new. Industrial development 
was too rapid. Competition was not intense. The ma- 
terial resources of our country seemed inexhaustible. We 
stupidly blundered on while all around us waste of every 
description held royal carnival. The soil was half culti- 
vated and less than half cared for. Our great forests of 
splendid pine were ruthlessly destroyed. The sky was red 
with flaming gas wells in Indiana and Ohio. No one seemed 
to think that our rich soil would ever become impoverished; 
that the time might arrive when we could not live in 
wooden houses because there would be no suitable wood 
with which to build them; that our great stores of natural 
gas would ever become exhausted. We went blindly for- 
ward from year to year, wasting enough to feed and clothe 
half of Europe. The time has come to pay the piper and 
it is a mighty long bill that the gentleman is presenting. 

I have referred to the general trend of the present effi- 
ciency movement because of its compelling importance and 
in order that what is to follow in this book may gain some 
emphasis. 

Why is it that so much of your fuel is wasted? If that 
question cannot be answered we might as well ring off and 
hang up because all of our efforts will be useless. 

Let us suppose that I visit your factory plant tomorrow. 
I call upon the Manager and ha receives me courteously. 
I tell him that a quarter of his fuel is being wasted and he 
admits it. He is "busy" and he passes me along to the 
Superintendent. That individual is "busy" also. He is 



14 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

worrying about the delivery on some big order. He sends 
me to the engineer and I know from his actions that he 
was glad to get rid of me. 

I find the engineer with a Stillson wrench in one hand 
and a pair of pliers in the other. He is the "wet nurse" to 
everything electrical and mechanical about the plant. He 
"hasn't time" to supervise the boiler room. He is too busy 
supervising the apparatus that the boiler room serves to 
pay any attention to the thing that is doing the serving. Of 
course they waste coal in the boiler room, but look at the 
"dagoes" and "niggers" that they are forced to employ as 
firemen. The Manager is satisfied with that kind of ser- 
vice. The "old man" comes to the surface once a month 
and blows like a whale about the coal bill. Aside from 
this monthly disturbance, all is quiet along the Potomac. 
Our conversation is cut short by the engineer's telephone 
and I go to the boiler room. I tell the fireman that he is 
burning too much coal and he indignantly denies it. He 
has been firing boilers for twenty years and says he knows 
his business. But would I just look at the stuff the coal 
dealer is delivering? 

And so I go to the coal dealer and ask him about it. He 
tells me that he is delivering the very grade of fuel called 
for in his contract, that it is good fuel and the plant has 
no kick coming. And thus I make the complete circuit of 
your establishment, like a kitten chasing its tail. I have made 
that circuit of power plants so many times that I am get- 
ting dizzy. Everybody lays it on the dog and nobody 
wants to be the goat. And that is "WHY YOUR FUEL 
IS WASTED." 

A reform is necessary in your boiler room and in order 
to initiate it there must be an initiator. Absolutely noth- 
ing can be hoped for until somebody starts something. 

I was talking a few weeks ago with a consulting engineer 
in the city of Philadelphia. He said : "I get plenty of work, 
charge high fees and suppose I ought to be satisfied but T 
don't like my business. The Manager of a power plant, 
in a fit of reform, employs me to make an investigation. 
I make a lot of recommendations, most of which if carried 
out would involve the expenditure of very little money. My 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 15 

bill is paid promptly and I call again in a month to see how 
the plant is coming on. Not one thing that I have recom- 
mended has been done or ever will be done. I like to see 
my clients get some benefit from my services but in only 
about one job out of five are my recommendations actually 
carried out." 

Every consulting engineer in the country who has recom- 
mended improvements in the power departments of factory 
plants will appreciate the viewpoint of the Philadelphia 
man. 

Some one is primarily responsible for the fuel wastes in 
your boiler room. Let us proceed by a process of elimination 
and see if we can find the guilty man. We will start with 
the fireman. 

What was he hired for? To make steam of course. 
There is nothing in your contract with the fireman that 
specifies anything about making steam with efficiency. One 
fireman will burn a lot of coal and make a little steam. 
Another will burn a little coal and make a lot of steam. 
There is that difference in firemen and you know it. What 
method have you of differentiating between your firemen 
and comparing the efficiency of one man with that of an- 
other? What steps do you take to insure that every fire- 
man is an efficient fireman? Not a single step. You demand 
STEAM and you take efficiency like a tape-worm takes 
its dinner, — just as it is handed to you. 

Your fireman knows that if he does not supply enough 
steam he will hear from headquarters. He knows further, 
that as long as he does supply enough steam, nobody will 
come near him to disturb him. What the steam that he 
furnishes may cost you does not .concern him. Why should 
it concern him? If you are satisfied to pay the coal bills 
why should he worry about them? It is your coal and your 
money. Now, as a matter of fact, your fireman believes 
that he is an efficient operative. He even takes a little 
pride in the skill that he thinks he possesses. But he 
measures his efficiency by his ability to keep the arrow of the 
steam gage pointing at 100 pounds. He does not think of 
steam in terms of coal. He does not think of coal in terms of 
money. He places coal in the same category with clinkers 



1 6 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

and ashes. It is just so much heavy stuff to be handled in 
the course of the day's work. And what other concept can 
you expect the fireman to have of your fuel pile? As fast as 
one pile of coal is burned another automatically takes its 
place. The coal is always there and the fireman is given a 
shovel and "carte blanche" to help himself to it. 

We cannot blame the fireman for this quarter of your 
coal that he is wasting. We absolve him absolutely. He 
does the best he knows how and his performance is as good 
as the teaching he received. By the way, who taught your 
fireman? Some other fireman of course. Who taught the 
other fellow? And there you are. And there you will 
remain with your 25 per cent fuel waste until somebody 
shows your fireman that it is less work to shovel three tons 
of coal than it is to shovel four; that his labor will be re- 
duced as his efficiency is increased and that if he would work 
his muscles less he must work his head more. Most fire- 
men are afflicted with the hook worm and the sleeping 
sickness. "Do the minimum of work in the maximum of 
time and God bless pay day." This is the fireman's creed 
and for that matter it is the creed of almost everybody. It 
is human nature's creed and if you want efficiency anywhere 
you must learn how to deal with human nature. Human 
nature knows exactly how to deal with you. 

In the last chapter of this book I shall tell you about 
methods that have been successfully used to convert the 
very lowest grades of men into expert firemen. I must 
not be understood to mean that a fireman is necessarily 
a low grade man. It is well to remember that a man's real 
status is not fixed by his environment or occupation. I 
respect firemen. I have taken my turn at the boiler fur- 
nace and I am not ashamed of it. On the contrary, I am 
proud of it. I know the fireman's point of view to a red 
hair and I know firemen. There are good men among them. 
They will listen to any man if they are convinced that his 
experience in the boiler room is broader than their own. 
It doesn't require much prophetic vision to do this bit of 
accurate prophesying. — The time will come when men will 
graduate from the engine room to the boiler room instead 
of the other way around as at present, when watch firemen 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 17 

will receive better pay than watch engineers and when the 
highest salaried man in the entire power department will 
be the boiler room superintendent. That time has already 
arrived in some power plants. They have seen the universal 
mistake in arranging the personnel of the power force and 
they are now hitching up the cart to the right end of the 
horse. 

Let us now proceed to determine the guilt or innocence of 
the engineer as respects your 25 per cent fuel loss. 

An engineer is a man who is paid a mighty little for 
doing a mighty lot and sometimes earns* less than his salary. 
The chances are that he rose from the position of oiler 
and never served an apprenticeship in the boiler room. 
When he learned engineering it was not considered necessary 
that an engineer should know anything about combustion. 
In those days the theory of combustion was left to the 
college professors and the practice of it to the firemen's 
union. The engineer now complains that he has little 
opportunity to post up on either the theory or the practice. 
He might find time for a little study on Thanksgiving and 
Christmas, but he is busy at the plant on those festive 
occasions, supervising emergency repairs. On Sundays he 
worships with his head inside an opened engine cylinder. 
I have known an engineer to do a 72-hour stunt in a 
power plant without a wink of sleep, a word of complaint 
or a whisper of commendation. Such things are not un- 
usual. They are expected of engineers when the emer- 
gency arises and are expected by them. They are a part 
of the price that a man must pay for the privilege of being 
an engineer. I have said that I respect firemen. I respect 
engineers also, and I have a great many warm friends 
among them, but I cannot absolve the engineer for that 
25 per cent fuel loss as I absolve the fireman. 

Now Mr. Engineer we will go to the carpet: 

1. What is the efficiency of your boiler furnaces? 

2. What draft in your boiler furnaces will carry your 
load and burn the least coal? 

3. Have you calibrated your boiler dampers and the 
main breeching damper? 

4. Have you equalized the draft among the boilers? 



1 8 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

5. How much air is leaking through your boiler settings? 

6. When is an air leak an aid to efficiency? 

7. Where are the air leaks that are injuring efficiency? 

8. How much too much air are your firemen permitting 
to flow through the fuel bed? 

9. Do your firemen admit more air than is necessary 
at the furnace, either above or below the fire? 

10. How much excess air from all sources are you heat- 
ing and sending up the chimney? 

11. How thick should the particular coal you are burn- 
ing be carried on the particular grates you are using? 

12. Are you using the coal best adapted to your condi- 
tions ? 

13. Are you using the grate best adapted to your con- 
ditions ? 

14. Should the coal you are using be fired dry or wet 
for greatest economy? 

15. Is the grate surface just right for the highest econ- 
omy? 

16. How much and what kind of combustible is pass- 
ing up your chimney? 

17. What are the specific causes of the smoke you are 
making? 

18. Is the low evaporation of which you complain, due 
to the boiler, the furnace, the coal or the fireman? 

19. If you don't know why the evaporation is low, how 
in the name of Pluto will you proceed to increase the 
evaporation ? 

20. How much coal is your poor fireman wasting and 
how much more can your best fireman save? 

21. Will you state, under oath, that the boiler headers 
are ALWAYS properly packed and the setting and baffling 
ALWAYS in proper condition before your boilers are put 
into service ? 

22. Aren't you ashamed of yourself if you are unable 
to answer all of the foregoing questions? 

Now, Mr. Engineer, tell me candidly as man to man: 
Does not every one of those questions have a vital bearing 
on your employer's coal bill? If such is the case, does not 
your duty to your employer and your status as an engineer 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 19 

require that you find the answers to those questions if you 
have not already found them? And should not every en- 
gineer who claims to have passed the kindergarten depart- 
ment of power practice be able to answer them ? And didn't 
the Creator waste a lot of good mud in making an engineer 
who cannot answer them ? 

Let me tell 3^ou something: The demand for men who 
can go into big power plants and work out the answers to 
those questions is far greater than the supply. And the 
salaries that such men command are fixed by the law of 
supply and demand. There are not enough qualified com- 
bustion engineers to go around among the big plants that 
are calling for them. If you know of one that is running 
loose on the range, wire me his name and address. There 
are several jobs waiting for him. 

Every engineer might be a qualified combustion man. Com- 
bustion engineering, as I shall try to show, consists in the 
application of ordinary horse sense to the every day problems 
of fuel burning. Any man with a fair understanding of 
boilers and furnaces and with a real desire to learn what 
constitutes economical combustion can qualify in a very short 
time as a practical combustion engineer. To acquire the 
theory of the subject would of course take some time longer. 
In the last year I have traveled over a large section of the 
United States and Canada. I have talked with hundreds 
of engineers and have been present at the meetings of many 
engineer's associations. Combustion is considered everywhere 
the very livest subject that can be mentioned. I quote the 
exact language of one engineer: "The time has come 
when the steam engineer must interest himself in com- 
bustion, otherwise engineering will not interest itself in 
him." 

You can begin to "qualify" by commencing to study the 
boiler plant now in your charge. I know you are busy, but 
tomorrow you will be busier. There is only one way to do 
it. Wake up and get up. Gird up your loins, and go 
to it. 

Just one thing more, before I talk to the General Mana- 
ger. If you wish to institute any reforms in your boiler 
room, to make any repairs, to purchase any apparatus or 



20 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

to do anything else for the improvement of efficiency that 
will require the consent of the Manager, go to him like a 
man and state your case like one. Don't be afraid of the 
Manager. He won't bite you. If you come to talk busi- 
ness he will take the time to talk business with you. If 
he wasn't that kind of a man he wouldn't be Manager. 
And he wants an engineer who knows what the plant needs 
and who has the intestines to ask for it when he wants it. 
Certain of the Power journals have been discussing the 
"timidity" of the engineer and in the opinion of the editors 
the reason why many steam plants fail to progress is be- 
cause the Chief Engineer is afraid of the Manager. 

And now, Mr. Manager, to what extent are you individ- 
ually blamable for the waste of fuel in your boiler room? 
When I use the term "Manager" I refer to the executive 
who is the court of last resort on every important question 
relating to the power department. His official title may be 
something else. The man I am after is the man highest 
up who has anything to do with the power department and 
for purposes of identification we will call him the "Manager." 

I have talked with your firemen and with your engineer 
about the waste in your boiler room and I have obtained 
very little satisfaction. The waste will continue until 
somebody starts something. My notion of a "Manager" 
is that it is part of his business to manage. When a reform 
is called for, he should either originate it or see that some- 
body else does some originating. The waste in your boiler 
room can be stopped by an order, an edict, an irade or what- 
every it is that you issue when you want action. If your 
patience will permit a reading of this book to a finish I 
shall try to make good my strange claim that fuel wastes 
can actually be stopped by the fiat of the Manager. If 
you are in love with these wastes they will certainly con- 
tinue. If you are not in love with them but keep mum 
about them they will just as certainly continue. 

The captain is responsible for his ship and is held ac- 
countable for everything and everybody upon it. You are 
the captain of an industrial craft and you ought to sit up 
and take notice when the men of your command, heedlessly, 
carelessly and boneheadedly throw away your stockholders' 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 21 

money. If you evince no interest in fuel economy you can't 
expect your firemen and engineers to sit up nights and worry 
about it. They are not stockholders in your institution. 
Interest will not originate in the boiler room. The higher 
up that interest starts the better. It will go down by force 
of gravity and stir up everybody below its point of origin. 
If you maintain your sphinx-like attitude on the subject of 
fuel waste, your plant will never enjoy the benefits of the 
most economical steam production because there will not 
be any such benefits to enjoy. 

Treat the other departments of your factory plant with 
the same fine consideration that you show your boiler room 
and the sheriff will turn up in a short time with a placard 
and a tack hammer. 

Every morning your firemen are handed a roll of money 
in the form of coal. You do not even count it when you 
hand it to them. You permit them to spend it according 
to their own fancy. You require no accounting from them. 
This is better treatment than you accord your wife. When 
Madam gets her allowance you know to a nickel how much 
you have handed her. She has to stretch it and get along 
with it or get up in the silent watches of the night and 
go through your trousers. Did you ever put a scoop shovel 
in her hands and turn her loose on your pile of bullion? 

Every business day in the year a clerk from your 
office is sent to the bank to deposit the garnerings of your 
business. What would you do to that clerk if he should 
lose as many dollars each day on his way to the bank as 
you know your firemen waste each day in burning your fuel ? 
If he lost a quarter of a dollar a day you would be furious 
about it. And yet you can talk of the waste of many dol- 
lars a day in your boiler room and be complacent about it. 
You reverse the telescope when you look at the boiler room 
and this makes everything down there look very small and 
very far away from you. 

The money that your careless clerk loses on the way to 
the bank is not lost utterly. Somebody will find it and 
it may be returned to you. If not returned it may serve 
to buy food and clothing for some suffering family. But 
the fuel that your fireman wastes is lost forever. It is 



22 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

gone absolutely without hope of recovery. Needless fuel 
waste can be properly classified as an economic crime, be- 
cause it reduces our national resources and this in its turn 
affects everybody. When we apply that 25 per cent factor 
of needless fuel loss to the half billion tons of coal con- 
sumed in the United States annually, we have a conserva- 
tion proposition of national importance. 

A short time ago I called by appointment to see the Mana- 
ger of an Eastern factory. We were to discuss the subject 
of his fuel losses and how to stop them. He broke the ap- 
pointment to go to the golf links, but he was kind enough 
to leave a note of apology. I shall not call to see that man 
again. He can take his 25 per cent fuel loss or whatever 
his loss may be and stick it in his pocket. 

A Chicago fireman was caught, several years ago, selling 
a few hods of coal from the bunkers of the boiler room in 
which he was employed. The weather was cold and the 
stoves in the Ghetto were hungry. His employer was justly 
indignant and the fireman was sent to the Bridewell. A 
few months later this same employer was shown by a firm 
of fuel engineers, how and why his other firemen were need- 
lessly wasting more than 30 per cent of his fuel. He was 
"not interested." The loss itself concerned him less than the 
manner of the losing. 

It is difficult to understand the average plant Manager's 
point of view as respects fuel economy. He regards his 
coal bill as a necessary evil and he considers preventable 
fuel waste as an organic disease, peculiar to the industry 
in which he is engaged, — a trouble that must be endured 
because he thinks it cannot be cured. And so in many cases it is 
impossible to interest him. He will tell you that he is 
not an engineer, that he cannot hope to understand engineer- 
ing problems and that all such matters are left to his en- 
gineering department. But if you will go and talk with 
the engineering department you will find that he does not 
leave such matters in its hands. The Chief Engineer knows 
from experience about what his chances are when he makes a 
requisition for plant improvements. He must wait for the 
psychological moment to arrive before he makes his requisi- 
tion. We must get on the leeward side of the Manager 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 23 

and stalk him like a hunter stalks a lion. If he makes his 
approach at the wrong time or from the wrong direction 
his requisition will not be honored. 

A Manager recently said to me, "It will be necessary 
for you to discuss that subject with our Chief Engineer. 
We leave all such matters to him." "Leaves all such mat- 
ters to me, does he?" said the Chief. "In a pig's eye he 
does. If he only did leave them to me there would be 
something doing. Last week I went at the office with a 
requisition for a feed water thermometer. I was turned 
down. The old man said, we must 'economize.' I told 
him that was what I wanted to do and why I wanted the 
thermometer. I tried to explain that every ten degrees 
added to the temperature of the feed water meant a saving 
of one per cent in fuel and what do you think he said to 
me? He asked me if the thermometer would make the 
feed water any hotter. I told him that I couldn't heat 
water with a thermometer but that the thermometer would 
tell me where in thunder I was 'at,' that at present the 
only means I had of judging the feed water was by feel- 
ing the pipes. Did I get that $4.00 thermometer? I did 
not, and now I don't care what the temperature of the 
feed water is. I wouldn't turn my hand if the boilers were 
taking ice water." 

Of course the engineer took the wrong position in the 
matter. If he could not get the co-operation of the Mana- 
ger in securing economy he should have taken all of the 
economy he could get without co-operation. But he took 
the natural position and one that I find a good sized per- 
centage of the engineers in steam power plants are taking. 

If we must condemn the attitude of the engineer, how 
much more must we condemn the attitude of the Manager 
in that instance. If you want efficiency you must provide 
the means for producing efficiency. Pharaoh thought he 
could get bricks without furnishing straw and he fell down 
on the proposition. This happened 3,405 years ago, ac- 
cording to the chronology of Archbishop Usher, and yet 
in these late days and these enlightened times there are men 
who believe that they can put it over. The children of 
Israel did scratch around and produce a certain amount of 



24 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

straw but it was expensive straw for Pharaoh. And a lot 
of engineers have gone down into their own socks for the 
money with which to purchase needed testing apparatus. 
Go and ask the manufacturers of steam engine "Indicators" 
about it. They will tell you that the Indicator worked its 
way into the power plant through the lean pocket books 
of operating engineers. Today the Indicator is considered 
a prime necessity in power plant practice and the plants 
themselves are actually buying them. Go and ask the manu- 
facturers of Flue Gas Analyzers about it. They will tell 
you that a large percentage of their orders comes direct 
from the engineers of steam plants who are scrimping to 
buy the apparatus and who are paying for it in pitiful 
monthly installments. 

You remember, Mr. Manager, the time that your en- 
gineer came to your office, cap in hand, and asked you to 
buy something that he needed to improve the efficiency of 
the boiler room. You turned him down rather gruffly and 
he proceeded to "beat it." You haven't seen him since and 
he is not likely to bother you again. Nice encouragement, 
that, for an employee who felt that he was risking his job 
in asking you to spend a few dollars in your own interests. 
I am sure you would have respected him more had he 
stood his ground like a man and demanded the thing that 
his judgment told him he needed. I am not your employee 
and I am not the least little bit afraid of you, — hence I 
am shoving these few facts right down your throat into 
your gizzard. 

I do not mean of course that you should buy every fool 
thing that the power department asks for and that is guar- 
anteed to improve efficiency. Murder! No. That would 
be as reprehensible as your present practice of buying noth- 
ing. You have bought too much stuff in the past that proved 
to be junk and that is one thing that ails you. You now class 
everything that is offered in the same category. For ex- 
ample, when the smoke inspector was after you, you af- 
flicted your boilers with patented steam jets at a cost of 
about $200 apiece. You didn't know that these devices 
were condemed by engineering authorities nearly 50 years 
ago. And when the steam jets failed, you paid another 



Why Your Fuel Is Wasted. 25 

man about $200 per boiler to surround your fire box with 
air ducts. You didn't know that the air ducts were tried and 
found guilty before steam jets were invented. You didn't 
know that more than 1,700 patents have issued from the 
United States Patent Office, covering steam jets, air ducts 
and other fake furnace contrivances all of which violate 
the basic requirements of economical combustion. You 
have regarded combustion as a mystery and you have neg- 
lected to inform yourself. Hence you have bitten at the 
fakes and been bitten by the fakers. Hence you place the 
good things that you ought to buy in the same category 
with the bad things you have purchased. In the later chap- 
ters of this book I shall try to show you what a marvelously 
simple thing it is to secure economical combustion. I shall 
give you the data that will enable you to choose among 
the host of things, good, bad and indifferent, that are offered 
for the use of your boiler room. And the next time that you 
are asked by your engineer to buy something for power 
plant betterment, don't dismiss him but make him come 
across and show exactly how and why the thing that he 
wants is going to improve conditions. If he can't show you 
and prove his case, don't buy it. If he does show you and 
you don't purchase, give him a mighty good reason for 
your refusal and ask him to come again whenever he has 
a suggestion to offer. Give your power department the same 
business treatment that you give every other department. 

And so, Mr. Manager, when we submit this question of 
WHY YOUR FUEL IS WASTED to fractional dis- 
tillation and ultimate analysis, we find that you yourself 
are primarily responsible for all of the trouble. We are 
forced to condemn you without benefit of clergy. You 
are the "nigger in the wood-pile," the "woman in the case," 
the "casus belli" and the "primordial germ" of all of the 
fuel wastes in your boiler room. If you don't take a stand 
for economy we might as well throw up the sponge and 
all the rest of the groceries. If we can get you started 
and keep you going we can inoculate everything on two 
legs around your factory with the germs of economy and 
the anti-toxins of waste. We can even make the girls in 
the office remember to turn out the electric lights when 



26 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

they are not needed. We can go to the very limit in every- 
thing that affects the cost of heat, light and power. We 
can't do a blamed thing if you won't back us and help us. 
You are in a position to say that the things which should 
be done, must be done. If your engineer is incompetent 
or remiss in his duties, put him on the toboggan slide and 
get another one. And the next time that you hire a chief 
engineer look at his head before you look at his hands. If 
he is short a few fingers it doesn't matter, but if he is 
short in the noddle you don't want him. If he doesn't 
know to stop fuel wastes you can't afford him. 

And now, having blackguarded everybody to my heart's 
content, let us get down to the brass carpet tacks of the 
furnace efficiency question. In the next four chapters I 
shall try to hold up each individual item of fuel waste and 
visualize it so that you can see it. And for each item of 
preventable waste I shall offer a specific remedy. I want 
the Manager, the Chief Engineer and the Firemen to go 
with me to the boiler room and stay with me through those 
four chapters. I shall have something to say to each of 
them. And what I shall say will apply to your plant, no 
matter whether you have hand-fired furnaces or automatic 
stokers, — no matter whether you burn coal, oil, gas, saw- 
dust or buffalo chips. Combustion is combustion. It makes 
very little differences what the fuel is or what the purpose 
may be for which the fuel is burned. The same general 
principles apply in all cases. 



It is a short distance, as the crow flies, from 
the manager's office to the boiler room, but it 
is a dickens of a long road by the route that 
the manager travels. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW YOUR FUEL IS WASTED. 

Waste is the "black beast" of every manufacturing busi- 
ness. It has more lives than any cat that was ever kit- 
tened. We can't kill it. We can only fight it and we 
must be continually on the alert if we would keep the 
brute out of the establishment. Eternal vigilance is the 
price of economy. 

As I tried to show in the first chapter, fuel economy 
waits for somebody to start something. After things are 
started economy demands a very persistent follow-up and 
a careful attention to details. Fuel economy depends upon 
little things and many of them. I suppose the same thing 
may be said of economy in any other relation. How- * 
ever that may be, the statement applies w T ith particular force 
to all of the economies that relate to the production of power. 

The first step toward fuel economy must be taken in the 
field of psychology by the association of ideas, rather than 
in the field of engineering. The Manager must change his 
concept of the power plant. He must get it into the factory 
class and associate it with ideas of money earning. He will 
then apply to his steam plant the same business methods that 
he uses in his office ana factory. And if he does this the 
preventable wastes will disappear and the boiler plant will 
begin to really earn real money. 

Now let us try the "association of ideas" and see where 
it leads us. Suppose your factory is losing instead of mak- 
ing money. What do you do about it? You seek to dis- 
cover the causes of the loss and you lose no time about it. 
Your cost of production may be too high, your sales force 
may be inefficient or you may have been unwise in the ex- 
tension of credits. You will go hunting for reasons and 
causes and you will keep on hunting until you find them. 
As a manufacturer you have two general problems to con- 
sider, viz.: How to transform the raw materials into the 

27 



28 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

finished product with the least possible expense and how 
to transfer the finished product from your factory to the 
consumer with another least possible expense. These same 
problems present themselves when you consider the manu- 
facture of steam for your own uses and a third problem 
arises from the fact that you are both producer and con- 
sumer. You want to make the steam go as far as possible 
after you have manufactured it. Accordingly if you think 
of economy twice in connection with your factory product, 
you must think of it three times in connection with the 
product of your boiler room. 

Most manufacturers regard the entire power problem as 
a thing of mystery. Most engineers regard the combus- 
tion problem as a baffling proposition. There is no mystery 
about either fire or water. We bring the two together and 
the result is steam. There is no more mystery about a 
furnace and a boiler than there is about a stove and a 
tea-kettle. The process in each case is exactly similar to 
that in the other. It consists in getting the heat out of 
the fuel and into the water. There are accordingly just two 
general problems to be considered in the economical produc- 
tion of steam, viz.: 

1. Are you actually using all of the fuel? 

2. Are you putting as much of the generated heat as 
possible into the boiler? 

Burn all of the coal you buy and use all of the heat 
from the coal you burn. That is all there is to it. And 
after you have made the steam and developed the power, 
don't waste them. These propositions are self-evident and 
I state them more for the purpose of outlining the dis- 
cussion that is to follow than for your information. 

You are running a steam factory and selling its product 
to yourself. You are making steam at a loss and business 
gumption tells you that it should be made at a profit. Steam 
and power are commodities just as much as soap or plows 
or beer or pianos. You can go into the market and buy 
your steam and power from the central station. The dif- 
ference between the market price and the cost of produc- 
tion in your own plant expresses the loss or profit of your 
steam factory. 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted, 29 

The central station makes power to sell and you make 
it to use. It treats power as a merchantable commodity 
and sells it at a profit. You treat power as an incident and 
you produce it at a loss. The central station looks after 
the little big things that affect the cost of power produc- 
tion and you permit your power house to look after itself. 
And I have been in central stations that were wasting a 
quarter of their fuel. They were able to stay in business 
because some of the isolated plants around them were wast- 
ing much more than a quarter. 

Power, like any other commodity, can be manufactured 
cheaper at wholesale than at retail. The central station 
has that economic advantage over the isolated power plant 
but against this advantage are certain handicaps which tip 
the scales against it. It costs the central plant something 
to get and keep your business. It must run transmission 
lines and maintain them. All these items, which do not 
afflict the isolated plant, must be added to the central sta- 
tion's cost of power and to its total cost must be added a 
safe margin of profit. The "wholesale" explanation does 
not explain everything. If isolated plants were as economical 
in the use of fuel as they might be, the central station 
would find very poor pasture. The central station makes 
money because the isolated plants waste money. Now be- 
fore you contract for outside power let us see what can be 
done to place your own steam plant upon a paying basis. 

The raw materials out of which steam is manufactured 
are fuel, air and water. Air costs nothing and in order 
to simplify the work before us we will assume that water 
costs no more than air. The cost of water in the steam 
factory, may, of course, be considerable. The only costs 
we shall consider are those directly and indirectly related 
to the fuel, which we will assume to be coal. 

Let us suppose that we buy a ton of coal at the mine and 
that the heat value of the fuel is 14,500 British thermal 
units per pound. There will accordingly be 29,000,000 heat 
units in our ton of coal. As each heat unit represents 778 
foot pounds of energy we find that we have purchased con- 
siderable latent dynamics. If the energy in a few pounds 
of that coal should be explosively released in your boiler 



30 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

room there wouldn't be enough left of your factory plant 
to make a grease spot on the horizon. The process of steam 
power production consists in taking this energy out of the 
coal and making it do useful work in the factory. If we 
could only reach the switchboard with all of the energy 
that we buy at the mine the power bill would not be a 
serious matter. The average steam plant wastes 98 per cent 
of the energy between the mine and the machine. If a ton 
of coal costs $3.00 we get our money's worth on a nickel 
and a fraction of a cent. We begin to spill the energy 
out of that ton of coal as soon as it is loaded into the 
railroad car at the mine and we keep on spilling energy 
whenever we change it from one receptacle to another or 
transform it from one condition to another. More than 
half of the energy waste in the average power plant is 
preventable, so that if all of the losses could receive proper 
attention we should be able to make a half a ton of coal 
do what a whole ton had been doing before. 

The table presented in Chapter I shows about how the 
losses take place between the mine and the machine in your 
factory. It shows exactly where we must look to make the 
fuel savings. 

The first spill of energy takes place when the coal is 
exposed to the weather. It oxidizes very slowly. The 
University of Illinois has conducted extensive experiments 
to determine the effect that "weathering" has upon coal. 
The loss was found to be most rapid during the week or 
ten days first following exposure after mining. The waste 
thereafter, while very slow, continued indefinitely. The 
loss is greater with the smaller sizes of coal owing to the 
fact that a proportionately greater surface is exposed to the 
action of oxygen as the lumps of coal decrease in size. The 
loss in covered bins was substantially the same as in open 
bins. It was least when the coal was stored under water. 
In its bulletin on the "Weathering of Coal" the University 
says: 

"In the coals that have been tested, 1 per cent is about the average 
loss for the first week and 3 to 3^ per cent would cover the loss for a 
year, although in some cases the loss was found to be as high as 5 per cent 
in a year." 

It is probable that the figures given above are away in 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 31 

excess of what would be expected in commercially stored 
coal. It is obvious that only those portions of the coal pile 
that are actually exposed to the weather will be influenced 
by atmospheric action. Chemical change is, however, likely 
to take place at the interior of the coal pile. One of the 
objections to coal storage is the danger of heating and 
spontaneous combustion. These dangers are increased when 
the coal is in a finely divided condition and contains sul- 
phur or pyrites of iron. When coal heats spontaneously there 
is a loss of heat energy equal to the actual heat generated 
and when it ignites spontaneously the loss may be total. 

Unless there is some good reason for the storage of coal 
in quantity it is best to keep as little of it on hand as possi- 
ble. The storage place should, of course, be located with 
reference to convenience and ease of transferring the fuel from 
the bunkers to the furnaces. My observation has been that 
in many power plants a change in the location and arrange- 
ment of the bunkers would result in a material saving of 
money. Labor, like coal, represents money, and it is often 
more difficult to handle than the inanimate fuel. The big 
central station installs coal and ash handling machinery 
which cuts down the cost of power by reducing the cost of 
labor. 

It is not practical to store coal under water and so I have 
set the loss due to weathering in the column of non-pre- 
ventable wastes. I have placed this loss at 1 per cent, or 
290,000 heat units, and we won't cry about it because there 
are enough losses ahead of us to weep over. 

To get any good from coal you must put it in the fur- 
nace and burn it. How much of your coal is wasted in 
handling? A lot more than you imagine. Take a walk 
through your boiler room and around your boiler house 
and see for yourself. You will find raw coal everywhere. 
Feet and wheels have ground it into a powder. You will 
find coal in the ash pile that never saw the inside of the 
furnace. If there is coal in front of the boilers when the 
fires are cleaned some of it will get into the ash and be 
carried to the dump. Some of the ash will get into the coal 
and with it go into the furnace. The result will be clinkers, 



32 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

which make work and waste fuel. The loss in handling is 
very small as compared with some other losses. It is large 
enough to be considered and it can be cured if you will see 
that better housekeeping methods are adopted in your boiler 
room, I have placed the loss in handling at 1 per cent of the 
fuel. It is less than that in some plants and much more in 
some others. The reader will remember that in all of the 
figures presented in this book the conditions that obtain in 
average power plants, big and little, are being considered. 

Now, how will you induce your men to be more careful in 
the handling of your fuel ? By impressing the fact upon them 
that a lump of coal represents money. The fireman, as I 
have already told you, does not think of coal in terms of 
money. 

I was walking through the boiler room of a power plant 
not long ago in company with the Manager. We stopped 
to watch a fireman who was loading up a wheel-barrow with 
clinkers and ashes. When the man's back was turned I 
dropped a nickel at his feet and then called his attention to 
the coin, with the remark that somebody was very careless 
with money. He lost no time in putting that nickel in his 
pocket. Visions of a foaming tin bucket rose before him. I 
said to him, "Man, there must be something wrong with 
your eyesight. I saw another nickel go into that wheel- 
barrow with the ashes." He dumped that barrow of ashes 
on the floor and pawed all through it. He didn't find the 
money, I said, "Bring me a pail of water and I will show 
you how to find money in ashes." If there is anything that 
will make coal and coke stand up in a pile of ashes it is a 
douche of water. I drenched the ash-pile and then picked 
it over. I got a respectable looking pile of coke and coal from 
the ashes. It was unnecessary to explain to the fireman what 
I meant by money in the ashes, or to explain to him that 
the money he was throwing away belonged to the Manager 
of the plant who stood beside me. The next time it rains 
take your firemen to the ash dump and give them an object 
lesson. 

You are not burning the coke that goes through your 
grates with the ash and you are not burning the combusti- 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 33 

ble gases that go up your chimney with the smoke. When 
you have looked around the boiler room and the boiler 
house, when you have looked at the ash pile and the chim- 
ney you will have some idea of the fuel that is being wasted 
without being burned. 

We must expect to find some coke in the ash and you need 
not be frightened if you see some smoke coming from the 
chimney. Smoke means waste as we shall see later on, but 
not in the way that is popularly supposed. The soot of the 
smoke cannot in the very worst circumstances exceed two 
per cent of the carbon in the fuel. There may be a great 
deal of smoke going up the chimney and very little combus- 
tible, or there may be a great deal of combustible and very 
little smoke. There may be combustible gas and considera- 
ble of it in the entire absence of smoke. These things will 
have consideration in a later chapter. 

You must expect to find some coke in the ash. It is im- 
possible to burn coal for power purposes and avoid all waste 
through the grates. It is possible to keep the loss down 
to a minimum. In order to know what the waste really 
amounts to you must first know how much ash the coal itself 
contains. If you have been having your coal analyzed you 
will know how much ash the raw fuel carries. In the ab- 
sence of a laboratory report you will be able to get quite 
accurate data in the following manner. Weigh all of the 
coal burned during a day's run and all of the ash and 
clinker resulting. These weights should be taken every day, 
but that is not the practice in the average power plant. 
Take a couple of scoops of ashes from each barrow load as it 
is removed. Douse these ashes with water and have them 
carefully picked over. On weighing the coke and the ash 
proper you will have the data from which the actual "ash 
waste" can be closely computed. If the loss does not exceed 
one per cent of the combustible of the coal you are doing well. 
If you are wasting four or five per cent, as is likely to be 
the case, your firemen must mend their ways. 

Much of the waste detected in the ash pit of the boiler 
furnace is due to the improper use of fire tools. The slice bar 
is abused almost every time that it is used. Watch your fire- 



34 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

man when he uses it. He will run it along the grates 
under the fuel and then employ it as a pry to tear the fuel 
to pieces. This mixes ash with incandescent carbon. The 
ash fuses and clinkers result. The purpose of the slice bar is 
to cut or "slice" the fuel away from the grates and to cause 
the fine ash to fall through the grates. Under no circum- 
stances dig up the fuel with it. Under no circumstances 
use it unless the condition of the fire calls for it. The fire- 
man can tell from the dark spots in the ash pit when and 
where the fire needs slicing. 

Why do you burn coal under a boiler? To make steam, 
of course, by passing the heat from the furnace through 
the metal work of the boiler where it can get action on the 
water. Now, suppose that you cool down the hot gases be- 
fore they reach the heating surfaces of the boiler, or that you 
cool them by outside influences while they are in contact 
with the heating surfaces of the boiler, or that you hinder the 
heat in some way from passing through the metal to the 
water, or that you permit some of the heat to escape before 
it has a chance at the boiler — you will lose just that much 
heat, won't you? And you will have to burn just that 
much more coal to replace the heat that has been lost. 

Burn as much of the fuel as possible — i.e., waste as little 
as possible on the floor, in the ash and in the chimney. 

Use as much as possible of the heat resulting from the fuel 
that you actually burn. 

Do these two things and you will get all of the steam 
that it is possible to make with the furnace and boiler equip- 
ment that you have. 

You probably lose about five per cent of the heat gener- 
ated in the furnace through radiation from the furnace and 
the boiler setting. You could stop four-fifths of this loss 
by proper insulation. One or two inches of asbestos plaster, 
covered with canvas and the canvas covered with paint, 
makes a serviceable overcoat for a boiler setting. 

This overcoat will serve the double purpose of keeping 
the heat in and the "cold out." You apply weather strips, 
storm sash and storm doors to your houses. Use the same 
degree of common sense with your boilers. The radiation 
loss is a small circumstance compared with that due to ex- 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 35 

cess air and the "overcoat" will reduce the excess air. By 
"excess air" I mean the air that is taken into the boiler fur- 
nace or into the passes of the boiler in addition to that ac- 
tually used in the processes of combustion. Suppose we take 
100 cubic feet of air into the boiler furnace and use all of 
the oxygen in that air to produce combustion, and suppose 
that we actually produce complete combustion under such 
circumstances. The furnace would be operating under ideal 
conditions and with the theoretical air supply. The fur- 
nace temperature would be extremely high — close to 4,500 
degrees Fahrenheit. Nobody has ever seen such conditions in 
a coal burning furnace. I am only supposing them. In 
burning a solid fuel it is quite impossible to maintain uni- 
form conditions throughout the fuel bed. The coal will be 
a shade thinner in some places than in others. Little cracks 
and fissures will form in the fuel as it settles on the grates. 
These thin places and cracks oppose less resistance to the 
passage of air than the other portions of the fuel bed and 
they get more than their share of it. Hence it follows that 
in burning coal or any solid fuel we are forced to entertain 
some excess air in the furnace. If we cut out this excess some 
portions of the fuel bed will not get enough air and the re- 
sult will be incomplete combustion. The gas CO will be 
formed and flow up the chimney CO is the principal con- 
stituent of the illuminating gas which is piped to your resi- 
dence at $1.00 per thousand cubic feet by the gas company. 
You can't afford to send a valuable gas like that up the 
chimney. 

You can get complete combustion of coal in the boiler 
furnace and not use more than 40 per cent excess air. If 
the coal runs high in ash it will be necessary to use more 
air, and if you are burning oil or gas under your boilers you 
can reduce the 40 per cent excess. In the next chapter I 
shall tell you how you may determine the exact percentage of 
air excess as well as the exact percentage of combustible CO. 

A brick is a porous thing. Throw a dry one into a pail of 
water and watch the bubbles as the water enters the pores of 
the brick and drives out the air. Weigh the brick before it 
goes in and after it comes out of the water. Now, remem- 
ber that there is a partial vacuum on the inside of your boiler 



36 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency, 

setting when the furnace is in operation, and atmospheric 
pressure on the outside of it. Every pore in every brick is 
busy trying to satisfy that vacuum. More cold air will 
flow right through those bricks in your boiler setting than you 
imagine. If you will glue an air-tight box to your boiler 
setting and connect a sensitive differential draft gage, such 
as is shown on another page of this book, with a tube run- 
ning into the box you will find that the suction of the chim- 
ney is communicated through the pores of the brick and 
that this will be indicated by the movement of the liquid 
in the draft gage. 

The 40 per cent excess air that you are forced to enter- 
tain reduces the furnace temperature about 1,500 degrees 
Fahrenheit. You want no more of that sort of reduction 
than you are forced to stand. Hence you w^ant to stop the 
infiltration of air through the brick work. The overcoat 
will stop it. If it is not the season for "overcoats" in your 
power plant you can stop the air seepage by "sizing" or 
painting the brickwork. The paint will make the boiler house 
look more home-like to the fireman and you will get a 
dividend on your paint investment every time the fireman 
throws in a shovel of coal. 

The cold air loss due to infiltration through the brick 
compares with the other cold air losses your plant is suffer- 
ing as a sneeze compares to a Panhandle Norther. We are 
right on the track now of some of the old "he" losses that 
are making a joke of economy in your boiler room. 

The chimney is constantly pumping air and gas from your 
furnace and boiler. The partial vacuum created will cause 
air to flow into the furnace and the gas passes of the boiler 
wherever and whenever it can get in. Now if there is a 
crack in the brick work that looks suspicious, try that crack 
with a candle flame. If there is an inward draft of air the 
candle flame will indicate it. A tallow candle or a kerosene 
torch is one of the most important pieces of testing apparatus 
that you can have in your boiler room. Whatever else you 
neglect to get, don't neglect the torch or candle. 

In the table of losses preceding I have fixed that due to air 
leaks in the furnace and boiler setting at 10 per cent of the 
heat generated in the furnace and this is a conservative esti- 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 37 

mate for the average power plant. I have seen savings of 20 
per cent made by stopping up the rat-holes in the settings of 
water tube boilers. I have known a plant to go from three 
boilers to two after the leaks were stopped. And I have 
the very dickens of a time making some engineers believe that 
the leaks in their boiler settings really amount to some- 
thing. I have to take a gas analyzer and prove it to them by 
actually measuring the volume of air that is flowing through 
the cracks as compared with the volume that is used to 
burn the coal. They seem to think that you can make steam 
with cold air. 

Engineers often say to me, "What's the use of plastering 
up cracks in the brick work? They will not stay plastered. 
The stuff will shrink when it dries and fall out." Of course 
it will. Therefore, don't "plaster" the cracks. Calk them 
with something that w^ill not fall out. Make a very thin mix- 
ture of fire clay and stir cotton waste into it, first pulling 
the waste apart so that every fibre of it will be covered with 
the clay. The waste being dry, will pick up a lot of the 
clay. Next sharpen a piece of board for a calking tool and 
with it drive the clay-coated waste into the crack. Fill 
the crack full and drive the stuff in tight. It will stay there 
until the setting falls down and the cows come home. This 
can be done while the boiler is in operation so that you can 
begin to get financial returns on your clay and cotton in- 
vestment without waiting for the boiler to be shut down. 
Two or three hours work and a dollar's worth of material 
will stop a lot of cracks. There are cements and other ma- 
terials on the market made especially for the purpose of 
permanently sealing up a brick boiler setting. They are 
somewhat superior to the paint and the fire-clay that I have 
here recommended. 

You must not assume that any crack you may find any- 
where about the boiler setting is not conducting air to the 
heating surfaces of the boiler. You don't know where that 
crack leads to and the only safe thing is to try the candle 
flame on it. And remember that a crevice between an "I" 
beam or a stay and the brick work may lead to some hidden 
avenue that will carry cold air where it will do a lot of dam- 
age. And don't forget to inspect the brick work on top of 



38 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

the boiler. Don't make a casual inspection. Make a thor- 
ough one. I found air leaks on one occasion, aggregating 
one and a half square feet, at the rear of a marine boiler of 
the "B. and W." type when the engineers of the ship were 
willing to make oath that the setting was air tight. On 
another occasion I won the cigars by finding more than 20 
sizable air leaks in the brick work of a "B. and W." boiler 
in a stationary plant. The engineer had just finished calk- 
ing the brick work of that boiler and he thought it was air 
tight. I had had more experience in the air leak business 
than that engineer and I knew where to look for trouble. 

You are not through looking for air leaks when you have 
finished inspecting the brick work of the boiler setting. In- 
spect the "metal work". I assume that in going over the 
brick work you will have seen to the clean out doors, the 
blow-off pipe, etc. This is not the "metal work" that I 
refer to. You are not through with the work of inspection 
until you have tried the candle at the boiler headers. A 
boiler of the "B. & W." type is an admirable steam gener- 
ator and it passes my understanding why the manufacturers 
have not devised some practical means of preventing air 
from flowing in around the front headers into the first pass 
of the boiler. The boiler doors are supposed to keep cold 
air away from the headers, but in most cases they don't do 
it. Show me a "B. & W." boiler and I will bet five to one 
that I can find some place about the boiler doors where the 
draft will suck out the flame of a candle. An inflow of cold 
air around .those boiler doors is not only bad for efficiency, 
it is bad for the boiler headers. Those headers were prop- 
erly packed, I suppose, when the boiler was delivered by 
the builders. The trouble is that the packing has fallen out 
and nobody has thought worth while to replace it. When 
the engineer's attention is called to the situation at the boiler 
front he is surprised. He had supposed that the packing was 
in proper condition and that the doors were tight. It is 
bad practice to "suppose" anything about a steam boiler. The 
trouble with the boiler door is that it will warp, that the 
catches will not draw it into proper position, that one or 
more of the catches may be broken, or that some careless 
somebody will neglect to see that the door is really closed in 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 39 

the way that the builders intended. In one case that came 
under my observation an actual fuel saving of 20 per cent was 
effected by packing the front headers of a battery of "B. & 
W." boilers. In that instance over 200 per cent excess air 
was flowing around the boiler headers into the first pass. 

Excess air is the greatest of all causes of fuel loss. The 
tax exacted by it exceeds the sum of all the other taxes com- 
bined that are levied by the wasteful furnace upon the suf- 
fering coal pile. I took the trouble to examine the logs of 
all of the tests made by the United States Geological Sur- 
vey at its exposition testing plant in St. Louis. The excess 
air losses as shown by those tests were ten times the losses due 
to incomplete combustion. If you want to make a home- 
run for efficiency begin on excess air. 

I absolved your fireman in the last chapter and I absolve 
him again. He is not responsible for the physical condition 
of your boiler plant. He takes the boilers as he finds them 
in the morning and he fires as he sees fit during the day. 
He hasn't time to calk air leaks and he isn't hired for that 
purpose. You can't make steam with a sieve. If you will 
take a candle and go over your boiler setting you will find 
that you are trying to do so. You could go all over a boiler 
setting in the time that it has taken to read this Jeremiad on 
air leaks. After you stop the leaks you will find that the 
boiler steams more easily and that there is more draft. Cold 
air kills draft. You may now have to check the dampers to 
keep the safety valves from blowing. 

An Eastern factory had great difficulty in getting enough 
steam from its three return tubular boilers. They were ac- 
tually contemplating the installation of a fourth boiler. The 
engineer bought five cents worth of tallow candles and went 
after the air leaks. When the cracks were calked there was 
plenty of steam. Now most men would have stopped at this 
point because most men are satisfied when there is enough 
steam for the factory. They look upon the boiler plant as 
just something to make steam, not as something that should 
be made to earn a profit like the factory proper. This en- 
gineer had been inoculated with the efficiency germ and he 
wasn't satisfied. Efficiency is the most appetizing thing. 
When you get a taste of the real article you can't get enough 



40 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

of it. In March, 1911, the plant in question was burning 
coal at the rate of 2,300 tons per annum. It is now burning 
coal at the rate of 1,000 tons per annum and turning out 
as much product as in 1911. This is a reduction of 56 per 
cent and if you don't believe the story you don't have to. 
The improvement was due to the efficiency germ that got into 
the engineer's system. 

When the engineer had stopped up all of the air leaks he 
could find he said to himself, "Are there any other places 
where cold air can get in to cool off the hot furnace gases?" 
This question led to the following conclusion: 

"When the furnace doors are open cold air will rush in 
and cool off things. This is bad for the coal account and it 
is bad for the boiler, as the cooling off and heating up mean 
expansion and contraction, which in turn lead to leaks. 
Therefore, it is essential that the furnace doors should be 
open for the shortest periods possible. To this end the fire- 
men must have the coal where they can reach it quickly and 
the doors must be fixed so that they can be opened and closed 
in the shortest possible time, and with the least possible 
effort. The firemen must understand that "time is the es- 
sence of things" when the furnace doors are open. 

These conclusions led to certain minor rearrangements 
and the firemen were speeded up to an appreciable degree. 
The engineer then remembered having read in a book some- 
where that a coal burning furnace can be most economically 
operated w^ith about 40 per cent excess air — that anything in 
excess of 40 per cent leads to needless waste through a need- 
less chilling of the gases. His line of reasoning led him to a 
further conclusion, viz. — that cold air could get into the 
furnace through a hole in the fuel bed, also that there must 
be some relation between the draft over the grates and the 
resistance of the fuel on the grates. In other words, too 
strong a draft and too thin a fuel bed will lead to excess air 
and the excess taken in this manner is just as damaging to effi- 
ciency as an excess taken in any other manner. 

He now saw that an apparatus for measuring the excess 
air carried by the chimney gases would be essential before he 
could go further with his investigations Without such ap- 
paratus he would never know how near or how far he might 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 41 

be from that dead line of 40 per cent excess. Moreover, he 
could never expect to standardize the firing practice in his 
boiler room until he had gages to measure the drafts over 
the fire as well as an apparatus to measure the excess air. 

On inquiry he learned that the very apparatus he required 
had been on the market and in use in power plants for 
many years, moreover, that he could take his choice among 
several different styles of such apparatus and largely suit 
himself in the matter of price. He accordingly purchased 
a draft gage for each boiler furnace and one flue gas 
analyzer. 

While waiting for this apparatus to arrive the engineer 
became curious about the heating surfaces of his boilers. 
On the Sunday following his first investigations one of the 
boilers was shut down and he made an examination of that 
boiler. It had been customary theretofore to just wash the 
boilers out when they were down and to rely upon the sav- 
ing offices of some physicking boiler compound. There was 
a whitish incrustation on the boiler tubes and a cleaning tool 
was obtained on the gamble that the innocent appearing white 
stuff might not be as innocent as it looked. It is sometimes 
impossible to tell by looking at a boiler tube whether the 
scale is as thick as an egg shell or as thick as a pancake. 
When the cleaning tool was through with the guts of those 
boilers it had jarred loose about a wagon load of scale and 
the engineer ceased to wonder why his boiler efficiency had 
been suffering with the belly-ache. 

The heating surfaces of boilers are made as thin as safety 
will permit, because the thinner the metal the more rapidly 
the heat will be transmitted to the water. Now the con- 
ductivity of steel is about five times that of lime scale, so 
that a tube with a quarter of an inch of scale upon it will 
give heat to the water no faster than a steel tube an inch 
and a quarter thick. Boiler tubes are about an eighth of 
an inch thick so that one-fortieth of an inch scale lessens the 
factor of conductivity to the same extent that it would be 
reduced by doubling the thickness of the tube. Any quantity 
of scale is bad for economy. 

The cleaning tool also dislodged quite a lot of carbon- 
aceous scale from the fire side of the tubes so that after the 



42 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

cleaning was finished both the gases and the water were in 
contact with the clean metal. The effect was extremely 
pronounced. It had been formerly difficult to get sufficient 
steam. The stopping of the air leaks had helped amazingly. 
The cleaning of the heating surfaces gave such an impulse 
to the boilers that there was now too much steam and one 
of the boilers was laid out of service. 

It is quite superfluous to say that the boilers in that plant 
are now cleaned of soot and scale accumulations so frequently 
that the heating surfaces are kept in proper condition to per- 
form their functions all of the time. 

I cannot pass this subject without a word of solemn warn- 
ing about the injudicious use of boiler compounds. In most 
cases they do more harm than good and in some cases they 
have been the originating causes of destructive boiler ex- 
plosions. Your engineer is liable to fix up some home-made 
preparation and put it in his boilers if he is not cautioned. 
I have actually known muriatic acid to be used. In the back 
woods districts engineers still put stable manure in the 
boiler on the presumption, I suppose, that it will be sure to 
increase the horse power. Don't buy a stock boiler compound 
under any circumstances. It may prove to be the very thing 
you should not use. Never use any compound until the 
water you are using has been analyzed and a compound espe- 
cially prepared for that water. Whatever compound you do 
use, inspect the tubes whenever the boiler is down and clean 
them whenever necessary. 

When the gas analyzer and draft gages arrived a fur- 
ther surprise w T as sprung upon the coal account. It was 
found that instead of an air excess of 40 per cent the fur- 
naces were taking over 300 per cent. The cooling effect of 
that much air offset the heat derived from about one-quarter 
of the coal burned. It did not take long to find the reason 
for this excess air. The fires were too thin on the grates 
and the firemen w T ere not careful to distribute the coal 
evenly over the grates. Thin spots and holes were the 
result, through which excess air was pulled by the draft of 
the chimney. After a little experimenting the proper thick- 
ness of the fires was determined and marks were placed upon 
the liners of the fire doors to guide the firemen. The effect 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 43 

of anything that was done to increase or decrease the air 
excess could be determined with the gas analyzer in less 
than a minute. This made it possible for the engineer to 
give the firemen some object lessons. He showed them the 
effect of every little crack and rat-hole in the fuel bed. He 
was even able to measure the exact volume of air flowing 
through a given hole in the fire and to tell the firemen in 
terms of coal how much saving the closing of that hole rep- 
resented. 

The two boilers now made more steam than the plant 
could use, whereas the factory had been limping with three 
boilers before the engineer got busy with his tallow candles. 

The second boiler was then cut out of service, but the load 
proved too much for one lonesome boiler. The grate sur- 
faces were then reduced by shortening and narrowing the 
grates under the two boilers. The engineer went as far as 
he thought it was safe to go in reducing grate areas and still 
there was too much steam. He then reduced the rate of fuel 
consumption by reducing the draft. He placed a draft gage 
on each boiler furnace and equalized the draft by adjusting 
the individual boiler dampers. In this way the two boilers 
were made to work under the same draft conditions and the 
combustion relations were reduced to a common denominator. 
The fireman could now treat the two furnaces exactly alike. 
What applied to the one applied to the other. There were 
the draft gages to show him when he had exactly the right 
draft and there were the marks on the door liners to show 
him when the fuel was of just the right thickness on the 
grates. The fireman could now be reasonably certain at all 
times that the air excess was close to 40 per cent and that 
he was working the furnaces at just about the top notch of 
efficiency. 

Now it is one thing to show a fireman what to do and how 
to do it. It is another thing to have him do it when nobody 
is watching. Everything about the boilers had been checked 
up and the fireman knew exactly how to get efficiency and 
a lot of it. It was now just a matter of checking up the fire- 
men. A gas collecting device was placed on each boiler so 
that at the end of a watch it could be known in a few min- 
utes exactly how much excess air had flowed across the heat- 



44 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

ing surfaces of the boilers during that watch. The engineer 
now had the means of exactly rating the efficiency of each 
fireman. 

The result of all of these things was a saving in that plant 
of more than 56 per cent of the fuel. And the happiest peo- 
ple about the plant were the firemen. They were now hand- 
ling less than one-half of the coal and ashes that they had 
been handling before. They had learned that a little mental 
exercise will save a great deal of manual labor. Skilful 
firing, like skilful anything else, requires some thought and 
a reasonable amount of attention to certain details. And when 
a man knows that he is skilful he begins to take pride in his 
skill. This is human nature — the same human nature that 
I have mentioned before. And, Mr. Manager, take advan- 
tage of human nature wherever you can. If you don't do it 
human nature will take advantage of you. 

The table, Chapter I, shows about how the other losses be- 
tween the mine and the machine occur. I have touched to 
some extent upon all of the losses with which we are concern- 
ed in this book, except that due to soot deposits upon the 
heating surfaces of the boiler. This will receive attention 
in its logical place in a later chapter. 

Take off your hat to the next load of coal that is delivered 
to your bunkers. It contains a quantity of energy that is 
quite beyond our powers of comprehension. Remember that 
you are wasting 98 per cent of it. I have in my desk a 
loaded cartridge for a modern high-service rifle. It contains 
a pinch of carbon in the form of smokeless powder. There 
is enough sleeping energy there to strike a blow of more 
than a foot ton at a distance of one mile. There are twenty- 
nine million heat units* in your ton of coal and each one of 
them when converted into mechanical energy is good for 778 
foot pounds. It takes a good sized modern locomotive to 
weigh 200 tons. Imagine a string of 56,405 such locomo- 
tives. There is enough energy in your ton of coal to raise 
all of them with their drive wheels spinning in the air one 
foot above the rails. The trouble is that our methods of 



*A heat unit or one B. t. u. is the quantity of heat required 
to raise one pound of water one degree F, in temperature. 



How Your Fuel Is Wasted. 45 

transforming and applying this energy are crude and ineffi- 
cient. Old Mother Nature sat up nights for more than five 
million years to prepare this energy for us. Men toil and 
sometimes die in coal mines to get it for us. We buy it 
with the money that other men have toiled and sweated to 
produce. And after you get that ton of coal into your bunk- 
ers, how do you treat it ? You arm an ignorant fireman with 
a 90-cent shovel and "sic" him on it. Now if I ask your fire- 
man anything about excess air or the other causes of fuel 
loss within his powers of prevention he tries to rub his ears 
off with his shoulders. The shrug is his mode of expressing 
an absolute and ultimate negation of understanding. Is there 
anything about the bad effects of cold air on boiler surfaces 
that the fireman cannot understand? Somebody ought to 
explain the effects of air holes in the fire to him. He needs 
a little teaching. But nobody ever heard of anybody teach- 
ing any fireman anything in your boiler house. Your en- 
gineer knows that it is bad to allow cold air to flow in upon 
the tubes in the first pass of his water tube boilers, and yet 
I can shove a full grown torn cat through some of the holes 
around his boiler headers. Maybe you think I am lying about 
the air leaks. Go and see for yourself before you come to 
such conclusion. The trouble with the engineer is that he 
hasn't thought about these things. He just needs a jolt from 
somebody and I am trying to jolt him. The trouble with 
the Manager is that he believes the fuel economy question 
to be outside the purview of his jurisdiction. He leaves all 
such things to the superintendent or the engineer or some- 
body else below him. As Dr. Dowie used to express it, "He 
doesn't believe in keeping a dog and doing his own barking. ,, 
The result is that nobody barks about fuel economy in your 
power plant and that is the reason for my barking and 
howling. 



The spigot may be dripping in the engine 
room, but the bung is out in the boiler 'house. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW TO "SPOT" YOUR FUEL WASTES. 

Now that we know how the wastes occur and about where 
to look for them we will visit your boiler room and take a 
look at them, I have been harping on 25 per cent in the 
first two chapters as a measure of the preventable wastes 
in the boiler room. I don't know what your losses are be- 
cause I was never in your boiler room. I do know that if 
the "hit or miss," "catch as catch can" methods prevailing 
in the average plant are to be found in yours, that your pre- 
ventable furnace wastes, when we come to measure them, 
will be mighty close to a quarter of your coal. 

Some twenty questions were propounded to the engineer in 
the first chapter, and he is entitled to know exactly how 
those questions may be answered. We will get ready to an- 
swer them. 

WHAT IS THE EFFICIENCY OF YOUR BOILER FURNACES? 

I put that question last summer to the manager of a big 
Southern factory. "Wait a moment," said he, "and I will 
tell you." He pushed a button, wrote a message on a slip of 
paper and sent it out by the office boy. In a few moments 
the paper was returned and this statement had been en- 
dorsed upon it by the chief engineer: "We produce a kilo- 
watt with 5.341 pounds of coal." The Manager smiled 
in a satisfied way as he handed me the paper. "There's 
the answer to your question," said he, "worked out to three 
decimal places." 

I replied, "Your answer is not responsive to my question." 
Every time I ask an engineer about the efficiency of his 
furnaces he begins to talk about the cost per kilowatt hour. 
Sometimes he has information on the pounds of water evap- 
orated per pound of coal burned, which is closer to the 
point but still a long way from it. In either case he is 

46 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 47 

giving me the two ends of the process only, and leaving me 
entirely in the dark as to what is taking place between the 
extremes. Now I have nothing against your kilowatts and 
what-nots. It is of considerable importance that you should 
know the cost per kilowatt hour as it gives you a line on the 
over-all efficiency of your plant. But that is all it does do. 
Is there anything about that figure of 5.341 pounds of coal 
per kilowatt hour that will enable you to place your finger 
on any specific thing about your power plant and to say as 
you do so, 'We are wasting fuel here; we must do this and 
that and after we have done it we will have reduced the 
coal consumption per kilowatt hour?' Your engineer's book- 
keeping is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far 
enough. It analyzes nothing for us and hence it gets us no- 
where. 

Now if you will take up the different factors in your 
power plant, one at a time, and scrutinize each of them 
without relation to any other you will get some information 
that means something. If you will bring each factor up to 
the highest possible state of efficiency you won't need to 
worry about the cost per kilowatt hour. It will take care 
of itself. It will be as low as it is possible to get it and you 
will have to be satisfied with it, whatever it is. No amount 
of bookkeeping will change it. If I should ask you about 
the efficiency of your stenographer would it be a responsive 
answer to tell me what your gross annual sales were last 
year? Or if I should ask you how you are feeling this 
morning, would it be a responsive answer to say that your 
family, consisting of your wife, your three children, your 
mother-in-law, the hired girl and yourself, were 50 per cent 
well? Now, when I try to find out how much coal you are 
wasting at the boiler furnace you give me a figure, that, if I 
knew the heat value of your coal, would tell me something 
about the combined efficiency of the fireman, the furnace, 
the boiler, the economizer, the superheater, the engine, the 
generator and the lubricating oil. We can't convict anything 
on the cost per kilowatt hour. The figure may tell us that 
something is wrong somewhere, but that is all it does tell 
us. It is of no fuel-saving, money-making use to us." 

Much of the bookkeeping in power plants is useless be- 



48 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

cause it leads to no useful end. In what way does it help 
you to know the cost per kilowatt hour if the information 
does not assist you to reduce the cost per kilowatt hour ? You 
can get your cost of power by adding up each month all of 
the expenses that the power house has incurred and includ- 
ing a charge for interest and depreciation. Such general in- 
formation will enable the manufacturer to determine the 
power cost per unit quantity of his product and this is neces- 
sary to his cost-keeping system. It is valuable also for pur- 
poses of comparison. Month can be compared with month 
and fiscal period with fiscal period. The unit fuel cost can 
also be compared with that of other factories in the same 
industry. While such comparison may result in satisfaction 
it is not likely to result in anything else. The fact that you 
are producing power at less cost per unit of product than 
your neighbor does not prove that you are producing it 
economically. There are degrees of waste. If the other 
fellow is wasting 40 per cent that is no reason why you 
should be complacent with a waste of 20 per cent. 

I am not the first man to criticise the current system of 
power house bookkeeping. The following is quoted from 
one of the most prominent efficiency engineers in the United 
States : 

"Consequently, the common practice is to compare the data at two 
extreme ends of process. Let us take, for instance, the number of pounds 
of coal at one end and the number of kilowatt hours generated at the other. 
With no knowledge of the heating value of coal used, nor the number of 
B. t. u. consumed per kilowatt hour, nor even of the mechanical efficiency 
of the equipment, we shall not be any the wiser as to the stage of the whole 
process in which the loss occurs, nor how big it is. We ought to know 
precisely how much is lost in certain steps of the transformation of energy 
from one form into another." 

We cannot help saying "Amen" to that quotation. 

The engineer will get some ideas on sensible power cost 
bookkeeping if he will study the nurse's daily chart the 
next time he is laid up in the hospital. The nurse is care- 
ful to record every fact relating to the patient's condition in 
which the doctor is interested. She brushes the patient's 
teeth and trims his toe nails, but she does not encumber 
the chart with these inconsequential details. She writes down 
only what the doctor wants to know and when the physician 
arrives he looks at the chart before he looks at the patient. 

There are engineers who make a careful record of every- 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 



49 



thing without regard to what is important and what is not. 
Such bookkeeping is laborious, "costive" and to a large ex- 
tent useless. There are other engineers who never make a 
record of anything. The sensible practice as to bookkeeping 
lies between these two extremes. 



RECORDS OF MAINTENANCE 


BOILER 


TUBES BLOWN 


MUD BLOWN 


CUT 

OUT 


CUT 
IN 


WASHED 


SCALLREMOVED 


1 




















2 










3 










4- 












COMBUSTION 
CHAMBER CLEANED 


COND/T/O/S/ Of=- 


CO/WD. 0/=~ 
BFT/CK WOfi?K 


SLOW OF-pr 


1 










2 










3 










A- 










RER4/R5 NEE DEL 


n 




























SO/L-ER ^>U£>T 



I shall not attempt to outline any system of powerhouse 
bookkeeping. The records that you do employ, to be of use, 
must be to the point and reach the spot. Whatever else 
they may show, they should indicate the causes of waste and 
measure the effects. They should keep the physical condition 
of the boiler plant constantly before the Engineer and Man- 
ager. There should be records of maintenance as well as 
records of operation. If you will make some one man per- 
sonally responsible for the physical condition of your furnaces 
and boilers and require signed reports on blanks furnished, 
you will not be bothered with soot and scale, with broken 
down baffles or with leaks in the brick work of the boiler 
settings. 



50 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

Where nobody reports to anybody about anything and no- 
body is made responsible for anything, nothing need be ex- 
pected because nobody is interested. 

The illustration on this page is not an exaggeration. The 
boiler is not covered and the setting is disintegrating. You 
can actually find boilers and settings in that condition. The 
boilers in your plant are covered, of course, but there are 
leaks in the settings, as serious in the aggregate, perhaps, as 
those shown in the picture. I visited a large power plant in 
Brooklyn and the brick work of the boilers was in worse 




shape than the horrible example at which you are now look- 
ing. They were "expecting to re-set the boilers" at some 
time in the indefinite future and hence they did not consider 
it worth while to do anything to "those old settings." A few 
dollars' worth of material and a few more dollars' worth of 
time would have calked the settings of the ten boilers and 
the firm would have made about 100 per cent a day on the 
investment. 

It is much the same old story wherever you may go visit- 
ing power plants. Conditions exist in the boiler room that 
would not be permitted in any other department of the fac- 
tory. Hence that waste of a quarter of the fuel. 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 51 

By what criterion shall the efficiency of a furnace be 
judged? 

THAT FURNACE IS THE MOST EFFICIENT 
WHICH COMPLETELY CONSUMES THE COM- 
BUSTIBLE WITH THE LEAST SURPLUS OF AIR. 

Here we have the whole thing in a very small nut-shell. 
No matter where we start or in which direction we pro- 
ceed, whether we consider the subject of drafts, of fuels, of 
methods of firing or what not, it is just a question of com- 
plete combustion with the minimum of air. Fix this in your 
mind and much of the "mystery" will fall away from the 
combustion problems that have been troubling you. 

Flue gas analysis answers every question bearing upon 
the efficiency of the furnace properj but it tells us abso- 
lutely nothing about boiler efficiency. No other form of 
furnace test ever has been or ever will be devised to super- 
sede it. The furnace exists solely for the gases that are de- 
livered from it, as it is from these heat laden gases that the 
boiler derives the energy necessary to its functions. Every 
judgment upon furnace efficiency must therefore be based 
upon an inquiry into the furnace gases. I can prove it by 
scripture. The gases are the fruits of the furnace and "By 
their fruits ye shall know them. ,, 

When it is suggested that a test should be run upon the 
boiler furnace the engineer by force of habit begins to think 
of the standard evaporation test because it is the only test 
with which most engineers are familiar. There can be no 
quarrel with this test if it is a complete one and properly 
conducted. It is incomplete* unless sufficient combustion 
facts are gathered to enable us to judge the furnace as a thing 
quite apart from the boiler. The boiler has nothing to do 
with combustion and the furnace has nothing to do with 
evaporation. You do not burn coal in the boiler nor evaporate 
water in the furnace. Hence when we are considering fur- 
nace efficiency alone, no question as to water evaporated 
should enter the problem and add its complications. 

The business of the furnace is to transform the heat en- 
ergy contained in the coal — to change it from the latent to 
the active condition and to deliver it in such condition un- 
diluted and unmodified to the boiler. 



52 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The business of the boiler is to take the heat energy from 
the carrier gases and make steam with it. We may have a 
very efficient furnace delivering heat energy to a very in- 
efficient boiler, The furnace is not to blame for the char- 
acter or physical condition of the boiler. The only excep- 
tion that must be made to this statement relates to soot de- 
posits and in many cases these deposits are the fault of the 
boiler and not of the furnace. 

There was a time when furnaces and stokers were sold 
under specified guaranties of evaporation. The wonder is 
that manufacturers ever stood for such an unfair method of 
judging their products. The leading furnace and stoker 
people are getting away from it and refusing to assume 
responsibility for the boilers that they do not furnish. They 
are guaranteeing furnace performance without reference to 
evaporation and the efficiency of the furnace is determined by 
an examination of the gases that it passes along to the boiler. 
This is the only fair method and the only scientific one. 

You do not try on your coat to determine whether your 
pants fit, and if the pants are too short in the legs you do 
not remedy the trouble by cutting off your coat tails. Pants 
are a part of a suit of clothes, just as a furnace is a part 
of a steam generating plant and as the study we are about 
to make relates primarily to the furnace we will leave the 
boiler out of it as far as it is possible to do so. The subject 
of boiler scale is of such compelling importance that I have 
been tempted to deal with it here in connection with fur- 
nace problems. I am precluded by lack of space from doing 
so. We will stick to the furnace proper as far as possible. 
We are forced, however, to consider the subject of air di- 
lution at all points between the furnace and the chimney 
and we must also take the question of the "short-circuiting" 
of the gases into account. It is quite impossible to make a 
proper combustion study without considering the physical 
state of the walls that enclose the boiler and of the baffles 
that direct the flow of the gases through the boiler. For the 
purposes of this study we will consider the boiler damper and 
everything except the naked boiler itself as a part of the 
furnace. 

The efficiency of the furnace depends upon the efficiency 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 53 

of combustion within the furnace and the safeguarding of 
the gases from outside influences until they have left the 
heating surfaces of the boiler. Now it is quite impossible for 
any one to look at a boiler and furnace and pronounce a 
definite judgment upon the efficiency of either of them. We 
can tell in a general way whether combustion is efficient or 
inefficient by observing the color of the flame and noting the 
condition of the fuel in the furnace, but the judgment of 
the observer might be 10 or 20 per cent at fault. The fuel 
itself has much to do with appearances in the furnace. What 
applies to one fuel and one furnace will not apply at all to 
another. And even if it were possible to look at a furnace 
and say, "This furnace is doing absolutely all that can be 
expected of it," it would be quite impossible to say that the 
boiler was having a fair chance at the hot gases delivered by 
the furnace. 

There are four large water tube boilers in the sub-base- 
ment of a well-known New York office building. Three 
of these boilers were good steamers. The fourth was a 
shirker. Its furnace received as much attention as the 
others. The boiler walls and baffling were carefully looked 
after. The tubes were known to be clean of soot and scale. 
But the boiler just balked and wouldn't steam, and what 
ailed it was a problem. The gases leaving that boiler were 
finally examined with a Flue Gas Analyzer and it was found 
that they carried a high percentage of excess air. It was a 
mystery where this excess was getting access to the boiler. The 
engineer was willing to swear that there were no air leaks 
anywhere about the boiler and the analyzer declared there 
was a big air leak somewhere. The boiler was shut down and 
the engineer crawled into the combustion chamber where he 
found the trouble. It had been the practice at one time to 
sluice the ashes through a 12-inch conduit which extended 
from the ash pit back under the combustion chamber to the 
rear of the boiler. Another method of ash handling had 
been adopted and the conduit was forgotten. It had been 
broken through by some laborer when cleaning out the com- 
bustion chamber and the result was an air leak into the 
combustion chamber 12 inches in diameter. 

Many stories having a similar bearing upon the subject 



54 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency, 

could be related. If there is more than 40 per cent excess 
air in the gases as they leave the heating surfaces of the 
boiler, something is wrong somewhere. An exception must 
be entered to this rule if the coal contains an abnormal per- 
centage of ash or if the ash has a disposition to fuse at low 
temperature. In such circumstances it is impossible to burn 
the coal effectively with as little as 40 per cent air excess. 
It has been estimated that when the coal carries 40 per cent 
ash the efficiency of the heat unit is zero. 

Let us now tackle one of your boilers and make an exact 
diagnosis of the combustion troubles which afflict efficiency. 
We shall require the following apparatus: 

1. Some tallow candles. 

2. A flue gas analyzer. 

3. A sensitive differential draft gage. 

4. A high temperature thermometer or pyrometer. 

We will begin our study with the analyzer and we 
shall need a piece of one-eighth or one-quarter-inch gas 
pipe long enough to reach the center of the gas "flow" at 
the point where the gases leave the heating surfaces of the 
boiler. 

In another chapter I have discussed Gas Analyzers and 
other forms of testing apparatus, explaining the principles 
upon which they depend and the methods of operation. As to 
the requisites of an Analyzer for making a study of furnace 
conditions I will merely say here that speed is absolutely es- 
sential. The conditions in the furnace may change from 
instant to instant and when a sample of gas is taken for 
analysis, all of the conditions obtaining when the sample is 
drawn must be observed and a record made of them, other- 
wise we shall be unable to interpret the real meaning of any 
analysis we may make. For example, we want to know the 
effect that the slightest change in the draft will have upon 
the volume of excess air flowing through the furnace. We 
wish to make five or six tests as close together as possible, 
varying the draft for each test. Now the excess of air will 
be affected by changes in the condition of the fuel on the 
grates as well as by changes of the draft. As the fuel burns 
down the resistance to the passage of the air will be less and 
a small fissure may form in the fuel bed at any moment, 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 55 

letting in quite a volume of air. This would of course af- 
fect the result and we would have no means of knowing 
whether the change in the volume of excess air indicated by 
the Analyzer was due to the change in the draft or the change 
in the conditions in the furnace. Hence speed in operating 
the Gas Analyzer is a requisite of the highest importance 
when we are diagnosing furnace conditions. Failure to 
appreciate this fact has led to many wrong conclusions by 
engineers and some of them have formed quite erroneous 
impressions of the value of flue gas analysis on account of it. 

The gas sample should be taken from the point where 
the gases leave the heating surfaces of the boiler. It should 
be taken from the center of the gas flow at that point and it 
should be taken through a length of ordinary one-eighth or 
one-quarter inch iron gas pipe. Under no circumstances use 
a perforated pipe. If you take the gas sample at any other 
place or in any other way, you will not get the information 
you are after. I must make the reasons for these suggestions 
as clear as possible, because it is by disregarding them that 
the beginner with the Gas Analyzer makes his first mis- 
takes. 

The sample should be taken at the point where the gases 
leave the heating surfaces of the boiler because you wish to 
catch all of the air leakage that is really affecting efficiency. 
Any outside air that may find its way into the boiler passes 
between that point and the furnace will reduce efficiency. 
If your gas sample is taken from the first pass of the boiler 
you will miss all of the air that is flowing into the second 
and third passes. The reading of the analyzer would tell 
you the extent of air dilution in the first pass, but nothing 
about the final condition of the gases, and it is the final 
condition that you are after. For the same reasons it would 
be the very worst of bad practice to take the gas sample from 
the breeching or any other point beyond the heating sur- 
faces of the boiler. It is quite certain that there are air 
leaks around the breeching connection and quite likely 
through the seams of the breeching itself. If the sample 
is taken from the first pass the analysis may indicate much 
less damaging excess than really exists and if taken from the 
breeching it is almost sure to indicate a great deal more. 



56 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

The temperature of the escaping flue gases should be taken 
at the same point where the gas sample is obtained and for 
the same reasons. You want to know how hot the gases are 
when they leave the boiler, not how hot they may be after 
they have chilled down by radiation and air leakage beyond 
the boiler. 

Air leakage into the breeching will not lower the efficiency 
of the boiler in ordinary circumstances. Under certain con- 
ditions it might improve efficiency by cutting down the draft 
as the tendency in most boiler plants is to use too much 
draft. 

I visited a power plant not long ago and found an evap- 
oration test in progress. Gas samples w^ere being drawn reg- 
ularly into a bottle at one hour intervals and carried to the 
laboratory where they were carefully analyzed by the plant 
chemist. He was very careful to determine the exact per- 
centages of C0 2 (Carbon Dioxide), 2 (Oxygen) and CO 
(Carbon Monoxide). The boys were going to work out a 
heat balance at the conclusion of the test and to this end 
they were very anxious that the gas analyses should be made 
just right. The weights of coal burned from hour to hour 
and the reports of the water and steam flow meters indi- 
cated a very high efficiency, while the chemist's reports on 
the gas samples indicated a low efficiency — a very large vol- 
ume of excess air. They couldn't understand it. The man 
in charge of the test had forgotten more about electrical en- 
gineering than I will ever know, but he didn't know the 
"A. B. C." of practical flue gas analysis. "What do you 
think of that 6 per cent C0 2 ?" he asked me. I was forced 
to tell him that it was "rotten" and that he ought to be get- 
ting about 14 per cent. "I will give you five dollars," he 
said, "if you will show me how to make that Roney stoker 
do any better than it is doing right now." We looked at 
the fires and they were dazzling white. We looked at them 
through smoked glasses and there was no sign of an air 
leak in the fuel bed anywhere. "I can't show you how to 
work a Roney stoker," I said, "but I can show you some- 
thing about analyzing flue gases. From what point are you 
taking the gas samples?" "Why," said he, "from the up- 
take of the boiler, of course, from what point would you 
take them?" 



How to "Spot*' Your Fuel Wastes. 



57 



We got a ladder and climbed to the top of the boiler. 
The gas samples were being drawn from the uptake, above 
the boiler damper and about 12 feet above the drums of 
the boiler. There w^as more air going in around the hood 
of that breeching than was being taken through the fuel on 
the grates of the stoker. The gas samples over which his 
chemist was working with such great care to insure exact 
determinations were utterly worthless. We then took a gas 
sample from the last pass of the boiler and the very first 
reading showed more than 15 per cent C0 2 , indicating an 
air excess in the last pass of less than 40 per cent, while the 
samples taken from the uptake were showing an air excess 
of nearly 250 per cent. 

One gas sample per hour is very little better than no gas 
sample at all. It is not enough to indicate an average. To 
indicate anything approaching the real average the sam- 
ples should be taken as often as once every five minutes 
and it would be better to have a continuous sample. The 
conditions in the furnace affecting the flue gases are not 
constant, even with the best types of stokers. 

Don't forget this: The gas sample must be taken at the 
point where the gases leave the heating surfaces of the 
boiler, wherever that point may be. Where that point may 
be located and how you are going to reach it with a piece of 
gas pipe, will depend upon the type of your boiler. 

Remember the boiler damper when you are placing the 
Sampling tube. The gas currents may be deflected by the 
damper and leave the Sampling tube in a dead air space. 





Incorrect Positions of the Sampling Tube. 



58 Hozv to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




"X" shows the correct location for gas sampling pipe — "Y" and "Z" 
the incorrect locations. The points marked "'AL" show some of the 
places where air leakage is likely to be found. If the ''baffling" is in 
bad condition the gases may ''short-circuit" as shown by the arrows 
"S" "S." 

The tube must be in the gas currents, whatever the position 
of the damper. 

If it is a boiler of the "B. & W." type you can thrust the 
gas pipe through the top "blow hole" at the last pass and let 
the pipe rest upon the boiler tubes. If it is of the "Heine" 
type you can run the gas pipe through one of the hollow 
stay bolt holes. If it is a return tubular boiler you can re- 
move the top "handle" from one of the boiler doors. This 
will provide a hole through which the gas pipe may be 
passed, and you must be sure that you are not getting any of 
the air that leaks around the boiler doors into the smoke 
box. The gases will leave the boiler tubes and rise in a 
curve to the uptake. Between these curving gas currents and 
the boiler doors there will be a current of air on its way to 
the uptake and the volume of the air stream will depend 
upon the amount of the air leakage around the boiler doors. 
Your gas pipe must pass through this stream of air and its 
open end must be in the gas currents. In ordinary circum- 
stances the pipe should extend to within about six inches 
of the boiler head and it should be above the top row of 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 59 

tubes. If the pipe should be thrust in too far it might ex- 
tend beyond the curving flow of the gas currents and enter a 
"dead air" space. Be certain that you are getting none of 
that air leakage around the boiler doors. If you are not 
certain, stop the leaks temporarily and if this is impracti- 
cal insert the gas pipe in one of the boiler tubes as the next 
best expedient. This will give you gas from but one of the 
boiler tubes and you want a composite sample from as many 
of the tubes as possible. I have found by experiment, how- 
ever, that an analysis of the gas taken from one tube will 
compare very closely with that of a sample taken in the pre- 
ferred way as above indicated, provided the tube selected is 
near the center of the boiler. If there is much air leakage 
between the arch at the rear of the boiler and the boiler 
head, a sample taken from one of the top row of tubes might 
show more air excess than a sample taken lower down, as 
most of the air flowing in at the arch would find its way 
into the top row of tubes. 

Many years ago somebody suggested the use of a perfor- 
ated metal pipe for gas sampling purposes. It was pro- 
posed that a gas pipe long enough to extend entirely across 
the boiler should be used, that this pipe should be capped 
or plugged at the end and perforated with small holes at 
measured intervals — the theory being that when suction was 
applied to the pipe each of the holes would furnish its quota 
of gas and that the sample secured would represent an aver- 
age of the gases flowing through the cross section of the 
boiler pass in which the pipe was extended. The use of 
such a pipe is to be condemned for the following reasons: 

1st. Gas will flow along the lines of least resistance. 
The nearest hole will furnish more gas than the next one and 
so on down the line. Unless the suction applied is very 
strong the chances are that the bulk of the gas, if not all of it, 
will be drawn through the first hole. If the rate of gas 
suction is very slow, as for example, when a gas collecting de- 
vice is used, one lone hole in the perforated pipe would be 
more than ample to supply all of the gas taken. 

2nd. Some of the small holes in the perforated pipe are 
quite certain to be stopped with soot accumulations and one 
would have no means of knowing when such stoppage had 
occurred nor which holes had been affected. 



60 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

3rd. The velocity of the gas flow decreases from the 
center of the boiler pass toward the sides, so that even if it 
were possible to secure uniformity of gas flow through all 
of the perforations in the tube, the sample derived would 
not be an average one. Assuming such uniformity of flow, 
the hole drawing from the slow moving gas current would 
supply as much gas as the one drawing from the fast mov- 
ing gases. This would make the "average" secured a false 
one and as the gases near the sides of the boiler carry more 
of an air excess than those at the center, the sample would be 
rendered falser still. 

4th. There is no sense in taking a cross sectional sample 
from side to side of the boiler pass unless you add to this 
sample another cross-sectional one extending longitudinally 
with the boiler from baffle to baffle. If there is any merit 
at all in the perforated pipe there should be at least one open- 
ing for every square foot of space throughout a horizontal 
cross-section of the entire pass of the boiler. 

It is quite impossible to secure an absolutely correct aver- 
age sample of gas through any pipe or any nest of pipes that 
could be devised. It is my opinion, and I base it upon a great 
deal of experimenting, that a better sample can be secured 
through an ordinary gas pipe opening at the center of the 
gas flow, than in any other manner. The gases are reason- 
ably well mixed when they arrive at the exit of the last pass. 
They have been tumbled up and down among the boiler 
tubes, and the point of best mixture is the point of greatest 
velocity, viz., at the center of the gas flow. You will find 
greater variations in the C0 2 content of the gases at the 
center of the flow than at any other part of the pass. If 
taking samples at that point you can tell from the analysis 
when the furnace doors are opened for stoking, when an air 
hole develops in the fuel bed and what the exact effect of 
the slightest change in the draft may be. Everything that 
happens to affect efficiency is reported by the gases having 
the greatest velocity, i. e., the gases at the center of the 
flow and as you move away from the center towards the 
sides of the pass or towards the baffles, the variations will 
be less and- less pronounced and when you reach a point 
very near the side walls there will be practically no variations 
at all 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 61 

About two years ago I received a letter from the Chief 
Engineer of a cotton mill. He stated that he was using a 
perforated sampling pipe and that he was unable to get more 
than 2 per cent C0 2 . I told him to throw the perforated 
thing away and to go for the center of the last pass with a 
piece of common pipe. He did so and reported 13 per cent 
C0 2 . The first hole in his perforated pipe had furnished 
all of the gas and the gas that it furnished was principally air 
that had seeped through the brick work of the setting. 

Flue gas analysis as a means of determining furnace effi- 
ciency has been condemned by a great many well meaning 
engineers. They have taken the gas sample from the up- 
take or some other place, not the right one. They have 
used a perforated tube or they have done something else 
not in accord with good practice. They have not secured re- 
sults and hence they condemn the whole proposition. I have 
yet to learn of a single instance where satisfactory results in 
the actual reduction of fuel bills were not secured when the 
right methods were followed. 

Having learned what sort of a sampling pipe to use and 
where to place it, the next step is to connect the Gas Analyzer 
by means of its flexible rubber hose with the sampling pipe. 
Drive a nail into the brick work of the boiler setting or 
wherever you wish to hang the Analyzer and see that the 
Instrument is at a proper height to facilitate ease in opera- 
tion. Don't stand it inconveniently on a box or a barrel. 
You must work rapidly when you get started, because you 
are out after useful data. You must make 50 or more C0 2 
determinations per hour and at the end of an hour you ought 
to have the goods on the furnace and the fireman. 

Your next step is to connect the differential draft gage, 
and I must digress here to say something about drafts and 
draft measurements. 

Owners and engineers of power plants are frequently 
heard complaining about the "draft" and saying all manner 
of unkind things about the chimney. Most steam plants suf- 
fer from too much draft rather than from too little of it. 
If you have draft troubles look for the causes of them in the 
boiler room before you blame the chimney. What you label 
"lack of stack capacity" may, perhaps, be more properly 



62 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

labeled "lack of engineering sagacity." You probably have 
chimney enough and draft enough. What you need is draft 
conservation. 

By way of making clear what I am trying to convey let me 
present an illustration. Let us suppose a farmer who wishes 
to take a load of grain to market. He has been out in the 
field with a wagon picking up "nigger heads" and other 
stony impediments to cultivation. He gathers just about all 
that the horses can draw but the load does not fill the wagon 
box. He wants to take some grain to market. Being a lazy 
individual and being in a hurry to get to town and cash in 
on his grain, he does not unload the "nigger heads." He 
piles the grain in on top of them and of course he gets stuck 
in a sand pocket going up Sugar Creek hill. I submit that 
it would not be fair in such a case to blame the horses. The 
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals should get 
after the farmer and a commission to determine lunacy 
should sit on him. Undoubtedly both of these things would 
happen. 

Good engineering is just good horse sense. When the 
capacity of either a horse or a chimney to do useful work is 
reduced by the performance of useless work, somebody is not 
exercising horse sense. 

I have investigated a great many cases where "poor draft" 
was alleged and in most instances I have found the chimney 
pulling about five tons of "nigger head" ballast for every ton 
of real cargo. And in nearly every case it has been possible 
to greatly increase the effective draft by throwing out the 
ballast. In some cases it has been necessary to make certain 
alterations in the flue connections, but in very few cases has 
it been necessary to do anything to the chimney proper be- 
yond ordinary repairs. 

We are told that it requires eleven and a half pounds of 
air to burn a pound of "coal," or around 23,000 pounds for 
each short ton of coal. The draft must raise this weight to 
the top of the chimney and in addition it must raise the 
combustible portions of your coal, for the oxygen of the air 
unites with the carbon of the coal to form the gas C0 2 , and 
the hydrogen of the coal unites with oxygen to form water 
vapor, H 2 0. The total weight that the draft must raise 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 63 

in the performance of useful work is therefore around 25,000 
pounds for each ton of coal consumed, or 2,500,000 foot 
pounds if your chimney is 100 feet high. 

Now suppose that the flue gases show 5 per cent C0 2 , 
which in all probability is about what they do show. This 
means that added to the weight of 25,000 pounds which the 
chimney must lift there is an excess ballast of "nigger 
heads" weighing right at 72,220 pounds to be lifted also. 
The chimney under such circumstances would be doing 
enough work to carry three plants like yours at full ca- 
pacity and with maximum economy. And yet the owner of 
such an overworked and uselessly worked chimney is per- 
suaded that there is something wrong with it. He spends 
a lot of money for more boilers and chimneys with the re- 
sult that his fuel bills go up instead of down, because he has 
to buy still more coal to heat still more air. 

The only thing that draft knows is to burn fuel and if 
you have too much draft after the new chimney has been 
built or after you have thrown out the ballast and given the 
old one a chance, you must throttle this draft as you throt- 
tle the steam at the engine. Your throttle is the boiler 
damper. 

Excess draft increases your fuel wastes in several ways. 
It increases the rate at which you burn the coal without a 
commensurate increase in the rate of evaporation. The heat 
of some of the extra coal that you burn is nullified by some 
of the excess air that is drawn in by the excess draft. The 
velocity of the gases is probably increased and in such case 
the boiler has less time in which to absorb the heat energy. 
The stack temperatures are higher. You lose at both ends 
and the middle. 

A proper draft gage is an important boiler room ap- 
pliance. It measures the actual draft used, but it cannot 
tell you the draft that you ought to use. It is like the scales 
that the druggist employs. These tell him the weights of 
the drugs he is measuring out, but they do not write pre- 
scriptions. The Gas Analyzer prescribes the draft that 
should be employed. The draft that will give you complete 
combustion and carry your load with the least excess of 
air is the draft to be used always. The Gas Analyzer 



64 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

measures the completeness of combustion and the excess of 
air. 

Engineers persist in connecting their draft gages at the 
up-takes of their boiler furnaces. In this case, as in many 
others, the common practice is the wrong practice. Suppose 
you wish to know the water pressure in the supply pipes of 
your residence. Where do you measure that pressure? Do 
you measure it at the pumping station of the water com- 
pany where it originates or do you measure it at the faucet in 
your kitchen, where the effective pressure is expressed? 
The rate at which you burn your fuel in the furnace de- 
pends upon the rate at which you apply air to it, and this 
rate, so far as a draft gage can measure it, is fixed by the 
draft in the furnace. The place to measure drafts, accord- 
ingly, is the boiler furnace where the draft is applied. Of 
course, if you burn your coal in the uptake of the boiler in- 
stead of in the furnace, it is another matter, and you may 
leave your draft gage, if you have one, connected at the 
uptake where it now is. 

The draft gage, it must be remembered, does not 
measure gas flow or gas velocities. It merely measures 
differences in pressure, — the pressure of the atmosphere on 
the outside and the something less than atmospheric pres- 
sure on the inside of the furnace. Under normal conditions, 
viz., when the fires are clean and of known and uniform 
thickness, when the furnace doors are closed and the ash- 
pit doors open, the draft gage may tell us something about 
gas velocities, — the greater the draft the greater the velocity. 
Now suppose we close the ash-pit doors, — what happens? 
The draft, as indicated by the gage will be increased, but 
the movement of the gases will be decreased because we 
have shut off the supply of air. If the air is entirely ex- 
cluded there will be no movement at all and hence no 
velocity whatever. On the other hand, if we open the 
furnace door air will rush in and move with considerable 
velocity through the furnace and the boiler. But the gage 
will show that there is less draft, — less difference in pres- 
sure than before the doors were opened. Velocity may be 
either directly or indirectly proportional to the draft as in- 
dicated by a differential pressure gage. 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 65 

What causes chimney draft? The force that is trying to 
go up the stack is stronger than the force that is trying to 
come down the stack. Hence there is a movement up 
the stack and draft is a "push" and not a "pull" as is com- 
monly supposed and as its name implies. 

Suppose, by way of illustrating the physical cause of 
draft, that we take a glass tube and insert it in a bottle of 
oil. By closing the tube with the finger we can lift out 
a tube full of oil. Let us next insert the oil filled tube 
in a vessel of water and remove the finger. Water will 
flow in at the bottom of the tube and push out the oil. 
The water, in seeking its level, exerts an upward pressure 
in the bottom of the tube that is greater than the 
downward pressure of the oil. Oil being lighter than water 
will rise to the surface of the water. 

Let us suppose again that the oil filled tube is 6 inches 
long and that we push it down in the water before remov- 
ing the finger until the lower end of the tube is 3 feet under 
water. We shall then have a downward pressure at the 
bottom of the tube of 2 feet 6 inches of water plus 6 
inches of oil, and an upward pressure of 3 feet of water. 
This would make the net upward pressure at the bottom 
of the tube exactly equal the difference between the weight 
of the oil in the tube and that of a corresponding 6 inch 
tube-full of water. 

Oil is lighter than water. Hot gas is lighter than cold 
gas. Air is a mixture of gases. Your hundred foot chimney 
full of hot gas stands at the bottom of a sea of air some 
50 miles deep. Precisely as in the case of the water and the 
oil, the net upward pressure at the bottom of the chimney 
exactly equals the difference between the weight of the 
column of hot light gas in the chimney and that of a like 
column of cold heavy air outside the chimney. And as 
the barometric pressure varies your draft will vary also. 
It is strange how many people there are who do not clearly 
understand these simple draft phenomena. If everybody un- 
derstood them there would be far less money spent for new 
chimneys and far less kicking about drafts. 

"Nature abhors a vacuum" and tries her best to destroy 
one. There is a partial vacuum inside your boiler furnace 



66 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

and all the way from the furnace to the top of the stack. 
Nature tries to destroy that vacuum and incidently to destroy 
your draft by shoving cold air into it, through the fuel bed 
in the furnace, through crevices and cracks about the furnace, 
through cracks in the brick work of the setting, through 
the pores of the bricks themselves, through air holes around 
the headers at both ends of the boiler, through leaks in the 
flue connections and breeching and through cracks and 
leaks in the chimney. The way to fix nature is to fix these 
air leaks. 

A steel chimney will radiate more heat than a brick or 
tile one and loss of heat means loss of draft. When put- 
ting up a chimney it will pay you to put up a little more 
money and get a real one. In the ideal chimney the tempera- 
ture at the top of the stack will closely approximate that at 
the bottom. The steel chimney is a radiator and it takes 
the heat out of the gases as they travel through it, thereby 
impairing the draft to the extent of the heat robbery. 

If you will do the square thing by your chimney and give 
it a show, — forcing it to perform useful work only — you 
will find that most of your draft trouble has disappeared and 
that the large expense you have been dreading incident to 
a new chimney or a higher one may be avoided. 

And having decided to give your chimney a fair show 
why not stop playing favorites with your boiler? Why do 
you have so much affection for the boiler nearest the stack 
and so little for the one farthest from it? Don't you know 
that some of your boilers get more than their share of the 
draft provided by the chimney and that others get less than 
their share of it? This isn't fair, either to yourself or to 
your boilers. It costs fuel and adds to your troubles with 
the smoke inspector. It gives you as many combustion prob- 
lems as you have boilers and furnace drafts. Why, a farm- 
er's boy knows enough to make his plow horses pull to- 
gether. Drive your boilers the way the boy drives his horses. 
First find out what draft you ought to use in your boiler 
furnaces. This draft, as I have stated, is the one that will 
produce the highest percentage of C0 2 without combus- 
tible CO and carry your load. You have a draft gage for 
each boiler or ought to have. They are not expensive. After 



How to "Spot" Your Fuel Wastes. 67 




No two of them pulling alike. That's no way to work the horses* 
It's just the way you work your boilers. 




Make your horses pull together. Work your boilers in the 
same manner. 



68 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

learning the draft that you ought to use, you can equalize 
the draft by setting the individual boiler dampers. I have 
known eight boilers to do the work that ten were doing be- 
fore, after draft equalization. If a furnace has too much 
draft there will be a fuel loss due to heating excess air. If 
it has too little draft there will be a fuel loss on account 
of the CO which is due to a deficiency of air. 

Draft gages are of great assistance to the fireman. They 
enable him to give each boiler furnace the exact draft that 
it should have — the standard draft for the plant, whatever 
that draft may be. They enable him to spot the fire that 
is getting in bad condition. The gage will show an in- 
creased draft when the fires are too thick or are becoming 
dirty. It will show a decreased draft when the fires are 
too thin or when they are burning full of cracks and holes. 
The gage when properly connected will show the draft 
loss between the uptake and the boiler furnace. If the loss 
is less than normal, you will know that something has hap- 
pened to reduce the friction in the boiler passes, that the 
baffling has burned out or has broken down and that the 
gases are short-circuiting. If the draft loss is more than 
normal you will know that something has happened to in- 
crease friction, that there are deposits of soot and ash 
upon the tubes and perhaps slag, soot and ash accumulations 
upon the baffles and the brick work of the setting. These 
deposits upon the tubes affect both the efficiency and capacity 
of the boiler by resisting the passage of heat energy from the 
gases to the water in the boiler. They make the chimney 
work harder to give the required draft to the furnace. And 
they will be found among the chickens that come home to 
roost once a month upon the coal bill. 



Some men are willing to spend a lot to save a 
little, but stick when it comes to spending a 
a little to save a lot. 



CHAPTER IV. 
HOW TO STOP YOUR FUEL WASTES. 

It is one thing to "spot" a waste and another to stop it. 
The apparatus for spotting was mentioned in the last Chap- 
ter. For stopping the losses you require what is known as 
"Spizzerinktum." This is a state of mind — a mental self- 
starting device that enables you to get going without wait- 
ing for somebody to come along and crank up your motor. 

Give the man who is loaded with "Spizzerinktum" a 
good steer and that is all he requires. He will square his 
shoulders, tuck in his shirt-tail and go to it. But the 
man who is not loaded with it — his case is hopeless. You 
might give him a whole herd of steers and other long- 
horned cattle and it wouldn't help him. You might kick 
him in the gluteus maximus every five minutes and it 
wouldn't hurry him. It takes that sort of chap about ten 
hours by the stop watch to pass a given point on any propo- 
sition. 

Show me an engineer who lacks "Spizzerinktum" and I 
will show you a plant so low down in the scale of efficiency 
that you will have to look up when you visit it to see bot- 
tom. 

Not long ago a plant Manager said to me, "We have 
bought every imaginable kind of testing and recording ap- 
paratus for our power department and none of it is used 
regularly. I believe that considerable might be accomplished 
if our engineer would take some interest and get busy. He 
is always just going to turn things upside down, but he 
never gets started." There is only one thing to do with that 
kind of a man. Tie a can to him and send him down south 
of the Rio Grande into the "manana country" to herd with 
the Greasers. 

Men who are accustomed to visiting power plants will 
tell you that the reason most plants are so low in efficiency 

69 



jo How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

is that the men in charge of them and the men back of 
the men in charge lack "Spizzerinktum." 

We will now get busy with the "spotting" apparatus 
mentioned in the last chapter. 

The manufacturer of whom you purchased your draft 
gages has surely provided you with explicit directions for 
connecting the gages with the boiler furnaces. If he has 
not done so he ought not to be in the business of making 
gages. We will assume that the gage is properly con- 
nected and that everything is ready. We will assume also 
that the boiler to be tested is one of the "B. & W." type. 

You shove the gas pipe, selected in Chapter III, through 
the top blow hole of the last pass of the boiler and I ask 
you as you do so to note whether the pipe has the "feel" 
of contacting with clean metal or with something that is 
soft and dirty. 

I was talking one time with the engineer of a very modern 
power plant in the very modern city of Minneapolis. We 
got around to soot and the engineer said, "I will show you 
that we keep our boiler tubes clean." He raised the slide 
over one of the blow holes at the first pass of the boiler. 
There was a good light from the furnace just below the 
tubes and we had a fair view of them. They were reason- 
ably clean. We then went to the back pass of the boiler, but 
there was no light from the furnace there and we could 
not see anything. I asked for an electric flash light and 
the engineer said that he could steal one "off" the night 
watchman. While he was gone in search of it I found a 
piece of gas pipe about six feet long and thrust this through 
each of the blow holes of the last pass and across the tubes 
of the boiler. I could tell from the "feel" of the pipe that 
there was a surprise in store for my engineer friend. His 
flash light showed furrows an inch deep in soot where I 
had plowed with the gas pipe across the tops of the tubes. 

Now it was evident that the man who had blown those 
tubes had not finished the job. He had blown the soot 
from the first pass back into the second and the double 
dose of soot from there back into the third. Then he had 
stopped to rest, or to look at a dog fight, or to visit the 
can or for some other purpose. At any rate he had not 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. Ji 

finished his work. Now if things like that can happen 
in well regulated plants what can we expect to find in plants 
that are not regulated at all? 

I have seen boiler tubes entirely covered with soot, so 
thick in places that the spaces between the tubes were 
actually bridged over. And the boiler room men really 
went through the motions from time to time of blowing the 
soot from the tubes. They didn't do the job properly at 
any time. Probably the nasty features of the work had 
something to do with the slovenliness of its performance. 
To clean off soot properly all of it should be blown off 
all of the tubes. To blow it from one locality to another 
doesn't help much. It is no uncommon thing to find soot 
so thickly packed into the corners and along the side walls 
of water tube boilers that you could use a hoe and shovel in 
removing it. 

In non-conducting properties, soot has been proved to 
be five times as effective as fine asbestos. It is one of the 
most effective of all known non-conductors. You want your 
boiler tubes to conduct heat as rapidly as possible to the 
water within the tubes. If you want to keep up steam when 
the soot piles up you will have to pile in more coal. 

And don't think for a moment that there is no occasion 
to use your soot blower because you make no smoke. If 
your furnaces never smoke at all there can be little, if any, 
soot upon the tubes, but there can be a great deal of fine 
ash, even from anthracite coal. Do you know how much 
fine ash was removed from the combustion chambers of 
your boilers the last time they were cleaned? There were 
wagon loads of it, most likely. Every bit of it was carried 
over from the furnace by the gases. And if that quantity 
of ash was carried through the tubes it is reasonable to 
presume that some of it landed on the tubes. 

If you are fixed to blow the tubes economically by a per- 
manent installation of blowers, don't be scared of blowing 
them too frequently. Two or three times a day will be none 
too often. Whenever you see smoke coming from your 
chimney, think of the deposit it is leaving upon the tubes. 
There is mighty little of real fuel value in black smoke, 
probably not to exceed 2 per cent of the fuel at the ex- 



72 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

Showing permanent installations of Soot Blowers on 
Stirling and B. & W. Boilers 



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Soot is the long suit 
in the winning hand 
of the Waste Devil 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 73 

treme figure in the extremest smoke. This has been proved 
many times by the use of soot traps and by analysis of 
the smoke. And yet the smoke may cause a loss of many 
times 2 per cent. The loss is not in the soot that goes up 
the chimney. It is in the soot that sticks to the tubes and 
does not go up the chimney. 

And a bad thing about soot on the tubes is that if you 
do not get it off it is liable to bake there and if this hap- 
pens very serious trouble may result. I recall one case 




Scaring Old Mrs, Soot Evil off her nest. An arrangement for 
blowing soot from a Return Tubular Boiler 

of a return tubular boiler that will serve as an example 
of carbonaceous scale. There was almost a quarter of an 
inch of it baked to the tubes. On reaming out one of the 
tubes a leak was developed and the boiler inspector con- 
demned all of the tubes. The leak was due to the corrosive 
action of the sulphur baked on with the soot. When the 
tubes were removed the majority of them were found to 
be pitted. 

Air leaks about boiler settings get on my nerves because 
there is no excuse whatever for them. You do not have 
to be told that they are bad for efficiency. Soot gets on 
my nerves for the same reason. If you want to see the soot on 
the boiler tubes stand up and show its bristles, poke around 
with a piece of gas pipe and peek around with a flash light. 

Of course, if you want soot, why, suit yourself. And 
help yourself liberally to it. There is plenty of it. 

Before you start work with the Gas Analyzer get a 



74 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

piece of chalk and a foot rule and borrow the fireman's 
wide-bladed hoe. Chalk a scale in inches on the hoe blade. 
You can then set the hoe blade up on edge on the furnace 
grates and tell exactly how thick the fuel may be on the 
grates. Next have the engineer draw a sample of gas and 
determine the percentage of C0 2 . While he is pumping 
the gas sample, read the draft gage and while he is analyz- 
ing the sample, look in the furnace and note the condition of 
the "fire," especially as regards the state of the fuel on the 
grates. Make a careful memorandum of whatever you see 
and note especially whether the coal is evenly distributed 
or all "hills and hollows." And look for cracks and thin 
places in the fuel bed. And don't forget to look in the 
corners at the front of the furnace. You may find bare 
spots there and you are almost sure to find one just back 
of the brick work between the furnace doors. It is a little 
difficult to get fuel on these places because it is hard to 
throw coal around a corner and the fireman is likely to 
slide over anything that is hard to do. 

If it is a stoker instead of a hand-fired furnace you will 
make the same sort of observations to detect air leaks. In- 
stead of looking for air leaks in the corners you will look 
in the hoppers and instead of looking through the furnace 
door you will look through the observation door. Every- 
thing that I am saying about hand-fired furnaces applies in 
one way or another to automatic stokers. The stoker has 
this advantage among others over a hand-fired furnace — you 
do not have to open the furnace door and let in a lot of 
cold air when you are putting in the coal. The hand-fired 
furnace has this advantage over the stoker. When the fire 
needs anything you can see what it needs and where it 
needs it and you can give it what it needs. If the boilers 
are set in battery, guess work must very largely prevail 
in looking after the stokers. The stoker requires attention 
the same as the hand-fired furnace and it requires a higher 
order of intelligence. Of course, there are stokers and 
stokers, but whatever type of stoker you may have you must 
not make the mistake of thinking that it will take care of 
itself. One of the most efficient plants I ever saw was 
hand fired and one of the most wasteful was stoker fired. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 75 

If you will permit me to pick the stoker and the stoker at- 
tendant I will back the machine against hand firing. 

Furnace efficiency depends upon little things and many 
of them. One little thing may not mean much, but many 
of them mean a waste of one quarter of your fuel. There 
is no place to draw the line on these little things. You 
must observe all of them. 

Now, if when inspecting conditions in the furnace, you 
find that the coal is evenly distributed, set up the hoe that 
you have calibrated and determine the thickness of the fuel 
bed. Do this from time to time as the test proceeds. If 
the coal 'is not evenly distributed, you cannot, of course, 
measure the fuel thickness. 

While you have been inspecting the furnace the engineer 
has been analyzing and he now reports, let us say, 5 per 
cent C0 2 . Before you proceed further be dead sure that 
the gas sample was properly taken. Is the open end of the 
gas pipe at the center of the gas flow in the last pass? You 
know how the baffles are arranged in the boiler and where 
they are located. You can judge about how the gases will 
flow from the bottom of the last baffle to the gas exit from 
the boiler. You can find the approximate center of the gas 
flow, if you are uncertain about it, by probing for it with 
the gas pipe and working the Analyzer. The center is 
the place where you get the highest C0 2 and the most pro- 
nounced fluctuations in the percentages. If you get uni- 
formly low percentages and there are no marked changes 
when the furnace doors are opened and closed, it may be 
that the baffling has broken down or some other abnormal 
circumstance has short-circuited the gas currents out of 
their normal channels. 

Now, what does this 5 per cent C0 2 mean? And why 
are we getting 5 per cent instead of 14 or 15 ? 

The C0 2 percentage indicates the volume of excess air 
flowing through the furnace and the passes of the boiler — 
the ratio between the air that is taken for a useful pur- 
pose in burning the coal and that which is taken to the 
wasteful end of cooling the furnace gases. That is all that 
it does indicate and its indications are only approximations. 
We might determine the air excess much more accurately 



j6 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

by finding the percentage of free Oxygen with the Gas 
Analyzer. The objection to the Oxygen analysis is that it 
takes time and we do not have the time for it. We want 
data and I have already shown how essential speed is to 
securing that data. Some of it will get away from us if we 
do not work the Analyzer about once a minute. It will 
take five minutes to determine the Oxygen. When you 
work the C0 2 percentage up to 12 or 15 it will be time 
enough to analyze for Oxygen and CO. Don't spend a 
minute on those gases until you do. 

Why does the C0 2 percentage indicate the excess air? 

The air normally carries about 20.7 per cent Oxygen by 
volume. When Oxygen combines with Carbon in the re- 
action of combustion, both the Oxygen and the Carbon dis- 
appear as such. The solid Carbon unites with the gas, 
Oxygen, and another gas results which the chemist has 
labeled "C0 2 ." He resorts to the formula because it tells 
him precisely of what the gas is composed — that it is one 
part Carbon (C), and two parts Oxygen (O). And 
moreover the Chemist is too blamed lazy to write out 
the full name of the gas, "Carbon Dioxide." 

It is a curious fact that when we take a given volume 
of Oxygen and add to it a given bulk of coal, Carbon, 
to form C0 2 , the resulting gas exactly equals the volume 
of the original Oxygen. Here is a case where we can take 
a pail full of fluid and add a solid to it without overflow- 
ing the pail. I must ask you to accept this established fact 
as "gospel" because the space is lacking to explain it. 

Now, remembering that the air contains 20.7 per cent 
Oxygen, let us consider an illustration: 

Suppose we have a quart of milk that is 20.7 per cent 
cream. We add a quart *of water and our two quart 
mixture is 10.35 per cent cream. There is the same quan- 
tity of cream as in the first instance, but the diluting 
water reduces the percentage of the cream in terms of the 
total milk and water mixture. If we add two more quarts 
of water giving us four quarts of weak milk in all, the 
mixture will be 5.175 per cent cream. The water excess 
would be three times the original milk and cream volume, or 
300 per cent. If you do not understand this thing your 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. J J 

milkman will explain it to you. Doubling the air supply 
works the same mathematics on C0 2 that doubling the 
water added works on cream. 

It should now be understood why the lower we go in 
the scale of C0 2 the greater will be the waste that the 
drop of each succeeding per cent indicates. For example, if 
we drop from 16 per cent C0 2 to 10 per cent, the loss due to 
this drop of 6 per cent will be around 6 per cent in fuel, 
while the loss in dropping from 10 per cent to 6 per cent 
is near 12 per cent in fuel, and in dropping from 6 per cent 
to 2 per cent the loss is 57 per cent of the fuel. Theo- 
retically the loss becomes total at 1.5 per cent C0 2 the 
volume of excess air heated being then so great that it would 
be impossible to boil the water in the boiler. The charts 
and tables presented will show the C0 2 and excess air 
relations in a more graphic and detailed manner. 

It must be remembered that all such charts and tables 
are based upon an assumed set of conditions. In the pres- 
ent instance the fuel is assumed to be pure Carbon, which 
fuel never is, and the stack temperatures are assumed to 
be constant at 500 deg. Fahr., which they never are. The 
higher the stack temperatures the hotter we are heating the 
excess air and the hotter we make it the more fuel we 
are wasting. 

It is not pretended that any engineer can actually com- 
pute his gains and losses from the table submitted or that 
the figures given indicate the excess air in any instance. As 
stated, the table applies to pure Carbon only. With such 
fuel the theoretical C0 2 would be 20.7 per cent by volume. 
When a bituminous coal is burned the theoretical C0 2 will 
be less, depending upon the percentage of Hydrogen in 
the combustible, probably somewhere between 17 and 19 
per cent, as against 20.7 per cent. 

The fuel waste in your plant may be more or less than 
the figures given in the table, but it will not be very 
far from them. They will serve as a sufficiently accurate 
guide for all practical purposes and yoa may, if you wish, 
base a bonus system upon them and reward your firemen 
according to their C0 2 deserts. 

Instead of presenting many tables applying to many coals, 



78 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

I therefore present but one, and it, as I have stated, applies 
to straight Carbon: 

C0 2 AND FUEL LOSSES. 





Pet. Pre- 




Pet. Pre- 




Pet. Pre- 




ventable 




ventable 




ventable 


Pet. 


Fuel 


Pet. 


Fuel 


Pet. 


Fuel 


CO* 


Loss. 


C0 2 


Loss. 


CO* 


Loss. 


15 .. 


. ... 0.0 


10.0... 


... 5.69 


5.0.. 


....22.79 


14.8.. 


. ... 0.148 


9.8.. 


.... 6.04 


4.8.. 


....24.21 


14.6.. 


. ... 0.305 


9.6.. 


.... 6.40 


4.6.. 


....25.76 


14.4. . 


. ... 0.470 


9.4.. 


.... 6.78 


4.4.. 


....27.44 


14.2.. 


. ... 0.635 


9.2.. 


. ... 7.18 


4.2.. 


....29.29 


14.0.. 


. ... 0.808 


9.0. . 


. ... 7.58 


4.0.. 


....31.28 


13.8.. 


. ... 0.990 


8.8.. 


. ... 8.02 


3.8.. 


....33.58 


13.6.. 


. ... 1.17 


8.6.. 


. ... 8.47 


3.6.. 


....36.08 


13.4.. 


. ... 1.36 


8.4.. 


.... 8.95 


3.4.. 


....38.87 


13.2.. 


.... 1.54 


8.2.. 


. ... 9.44 


3.2.. 


. . . .42.01 


13.0.. 


. ... 1.75 


8.0.. 


. ... 9.66 


3.0.. 


. . . .45.28 


12.8.. 


.... 1.95 


7.8.. 


....10.51 


2.8.. 


. . . .49.64 


12.6.. 


. ... 2.16 


7.6.. 


....11.09 


2.6.. 


....54.34 


12.4. . 


. ... 2.38 


7.4.. 


....11.70 


2.4.. 


....60.32 


12.2.. 


.... 2.60 


7.2.., 


. . . . 12.34 


2.2.. 


....66.30 


12.0.. 


.... 2.84 


7.0.. 


....13.02 


2.0. . 


....74.00 


11.8.. 


. ... 3.08 


6.8.. 


....13.74 


1.8.. 


....83.56 


11.6.. 


.... 3.33 


6.6... 


. . . . 14.49 


1.6.. 


....95.45 


11.4.. 


.... 3.59 


6.4.. 


....15.30 


1.4 




11.2.. 


. ... 3.86 


6.2.. 


....16.16 


1.2 




11.0.. 


.... 4.13 


6.0. . 


....17.09 


1.0 




10.8.. 


. ... 4.43 


5.8.. 


....18.06 


.8 




10.6.. 


. ... 4.72 


5.6.. 


....19.12 


.6 




10.4. . 


. ... 5.03 


5.4.. 


....20.25 


.4 




10.2.. 


.... 5.35 


5.2... 


....21.47 


.2 





I could not give you a table that would exactly apply to 
your coal because I do not know what coal you are burning 
and, lacking an analysis showing the relative percentages 
of Carbon, Hydrogen and Sulphur, I could not give you a 
table even if I knew the origin of the coal. And even if 
you contract for coal of a definite B. t. u. value and definite 
ash content, you will not know short of a daily coal analysis 



Hozv to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 79 

whether you are or are not getting the coal for which you 
contracted. When you adopt the modern method of paying 
for heat units instead of for fuel by the ton you will come 
nearer getting what }^ou pay for.* Until you do adopt 
that method, you can just roll up your pious eyes when 
you see the coal wagon coming and pray that there may be 
a few heat units in it. 

The table assumes the fuel to be pure Carbon and that 
the temperature of the escaping gases is constant at 500 deg. 
Fahrenheit. On this assumption the loss would become total 
at a fraction above 1.5 per cent C0 2 . The table also as- 
sumes the entire absence of CO. 

It is plain that the temperature would not remain con- 
stant — that it would decrease both at the furnace and the 
exit of the boiler with the decrease in C0 2 . While the fall 
in temperature would affect the table it may be stated 
that the figures given will very closely apply in actual 
practice where the fuel used is a low volatile, high carbon 
coal. 

The table further assumes that 15 per cent C0 2 is the 
limit beyond which it is not safe to go in good practice. 
There is a loss of 3.1 per cent due to excess air between 
15 per cent and the theoretical limit of 20.7 per cent C0 2 , 
which the author has presumed to figure as non-preventable. 

C0 2 AND AIR EXCESS. 
Pet. CO2. Pet. Air Excess. Pet. C0 2 . Pet. Air Excess. 



15 




38 


6 245 


14 




47.8 


5 314 


13 




59.2 


4 417 


12 




72.5 


3 590 


11 




88.1 


2 935 


10 




107 


1 1970 


9 




130 




8 




158.7 




7 




195.7 




To determine 


th 


e percentage 


of excess air for an] 



*For a discussion of this subject, see "How to Cut Your Coal 
Bill." by the Author. The A. W. Shaw Company, Chicago. 



80 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

percentage of C0 2 , as for example, 5.4 per cent, proceed as 
follows : 

Subtract the observed percentage (in this case 5.4), from 
20.7, divide the remainder by the observed percentage and 
multiply by 100. This gives the volume of excess air. At 
5.4 per cent C0 2 the excess air is 283.33 per cent. In 
rough figures the preventable fuel waste may be computed 
by allowing 1 per cent of fuel loss for each 12.11 per cent 
of air excess above 38 per cent. This figure is quite as 
accurate as the one commonly applied to feed water, viz.: 
one per cent of the fuel lost or gained for a change of tem- 
perature in the feed water of ten degrees. 

But to return to the specific problems before us in testing 
the gases from your furnace and "B. & W." boiler. 

What did the 5 per cent C0 2 mean? 

It meant that you were heating 314 per cent excess air 
and that you were uselessly wasting 22.79 per cent of your 
fuel; that for every 100 cubic feet of air that you were using 
to burn the coal you were taking in and heating to the tem- 
perature of the uptake gases an additional 314 cubic feet. 
You were using in one boiler furnace almost enough air 
to operate three of them. 

Now, if we can find why and where the excess air is 
getting in, we will know the exact reason for the fuel waste 
and we can devise a remedy. The draft gage says that 
there is a negative pressure, or a "draft" of 21 hundredths 
of an inch over the fire in the furnace. I am just assum- 
ing that draft for the purpose of the illustration. The draft 
might be anything. 

We now turn to the fireman, the favored fellow who 
is trusted to handle your money with a scoop shovel. He 
has been making steam without thinking. We must wind 
up his "think" clock and set it ticking. 

He has been putting some more coal on the fire and 
we catch him in the act of closing the furnace door. We 
say to him: 

"Why did you shut the furnace door? Why not leave 
it open? Why not take the thing off altogether and sell it 
for old iron? Every time you close the door you have 
to open it again. This takes time and means work and 
may burn your fingers." 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



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82 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



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How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 83 

The fireman looks at us quizzically. He thinks we art 
joking him. We press him for an answer and he delivers 
a pointed lecture on the economies of combustion. 

"Do you see that steam gage up there?" he asks us, 
"Well it is my business to keep the arrow pointing at 
100 pounds. How long could I hold steam if I did not close 
the door? The cold air would rush in and cool off the 
furnace. Everybody knows that. Sure, you must be 'josh- 
ing' me to ask such a fool question." 

And so we see that the fireman knows about the damaging 
effects of cold air. The trouble with the fireman is that 
he does not continue his line of thinking and apply his cold 
air theories to the thin places and the holes in his fire. 

We explain to him that the Gas Analyzer is an instru- 
ment for measuring the cold air that is going through his 
furnace and he immediately understands what the curious 
looking thing, that he has been eyeing with suspicion, has 
to do with his work. We now call his attention to the 
cracks and holes in the fuel bed and force him to admit 
that cold air is flowing through them, also that the cold 
air so taken is just as damaging to steam and efficiency 
as the cold air that flows through the open fire door. We 
ask him to take a light rake and level off the fuel. To do 
so he must break up the islands of coke and close the 
cracks and air holes. When he has finished we take the 
"calibrated" fire hoe and discover that the "fire" is four 
inches thick. We also note that stopping the air leaks has 
jumped the draft from 21 hundredths of an inch to some- 
thing higher, say 30 hundredths. We try the Gas An- 
alyzer at once and it reports 7 per cent C0 2 . Referring to 
the table above we find that the air excess has been re- 
duced from 314 per cent to 195.7 per cent. Subtracting 
the last figure from the first one we find that we stopped 
an air excess of 118.3 per cent by raking the fire and closing 
the cracks. We reduce the fuel loss from 22.79 per cent 
to 13.02 per cent. We take great pains to explain this to 
the fireman and we make him admit that the fire is now in 
better condition than before he raked it. 

The Analyzer has told us that we are on the right track 
but that we still have some distance to travel. There are 



84 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

no cracks in the fuel now, but we are not getting enough 
C0 2 . Possibly the fuel is a little thin for the draft that is 
being applied to it. The thinner the fuel the easier it 
is for the draft to pull excess air through it. On this as- 
sumption we have the fireman thicken the fuel bed gradu- 
ally, measuring it at intervals with the hoe. We get as 
high as 8 per cent C0 2 and there we stick. We have a 
"peach" of a fire but we cannot push the air excess any 
lower. 

We next move the gas pipe sampling tube to the middle 
blow hole of the first pass of the boiler and take a sample. 
We must grab this sample very quickly because when the 
tube is heated to an oxidizing stage it will take oxygen 
from the gases we are pumping through it and this will 
affect the result of our analysis. We find 14 per cent C0 2 , 
under the same furnace conditions that had been giving 
us 8 per cent at the last pass of the boiler. There is 
a thundering leakage of air between the first sampling point 
and the last one — 110.9 per cent. We now go after that 
boiler setting with the candles. We find leaks at all of 
the localities suggested in the previous chapters. The leaks 
about the headers into the first pass are particularly serious. 
We get none of this last mentioned leakage when sampling 
from the first pass because the sampling tube was toward 
the rear of the pass and the cold air was flowing in at the 
front of the pass. It did not mix with the gases until the 
second pass was reached. We got the full returns from it 
in the last pass, together with that of all the rest of the 
air leakage about the boiler setting, which the candles tell 
us must be considerable. 

We go after these air leaks now with an understanding of 
what they really mean to efficiency and we keep after them 
until two snap-shot gas samples, taken one at each of the 
extreme boiler passes with the least possible intervening 
interval, show the same percentage of C0 2 . When you 
learn how rapidly the gases change within certain limits 
you will understand why speed in the operation of the An- 
alyzer is necessary if you wish to accumulate data. 

When we know that the setting is properly tight it will 
be just a question of pursuing the study until we find the 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 85 

exact conditions of draft, fuel thickness, etc., that will yield 
from 14 to 15 per cent C0 2 . When we find these con- 
ditions we have "arrived" and it is just a question of 
keeping at it until we do find them. The process of finding 
is one of "cutting and fitting and trying." 

After the standard thickness of the "fires" has been de- 
termined, place permanent marks on the fire door liners 
for the guidance of the fireman. Instruct him to carry 
the fires on these marks at all times, as far as possible, and 
to control the rate of combustion with the boiler damper. 

Thickening of the fuel may aggravate your clinker troubles 
and you might lose here all that you would gain by the 
thickening. It is taken for granted that you will have 
sense enongh to use judgment in this matter and in all 
others. 

As you increase the percentage of C0 2 the furnace tem- 
perature will rise rapidly. The charts elsewhere show the 
relation of C0 2 to temperatures and of the temperatures to 
the excess air. The steam will go up with the rise in tem- 
peratures. 

About two years ago a committee was appointed by an 
engineering society to investigate C0 2 Recorders. It re- 
ported adversely and cited the fact that an increase ii? 
C0 2 was usually followed by a rise in stack temperatures. 
Hence it reasoned that high C0 2 did not indicate efficiency, 
but the contrary, and that all "C0 2 Apparatus" w T as to be 
avoided as promoting waste rather than efficiency. 

The "Chimney Waste" cannot be determined from the 
uptake temperatures alone or from these temperatures con- 
sidered in relation to the initial furnace temperatures. The 
pyrometer does not count heat units. It measures in- 
tensity without regard to quantity. A pint of water at 
the boiling point contains far less heat than a barrel of water 
at a far lower temperature. And so as regards chimney 
temperatures it makes a lot of difference whether the pyrom- 
eter is reporting on a pint of gas or a barrel of it. The 
heat loss in the uptake is determined by multiplying the 
temperature into the quantity of air and gases heated. You 
can stand a reasonable increase in uptake temperatures as 
you rise in the C0 2 scale because you are reducing the 



86 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

quantity heated faster than you are increasing the tem- 
perature. 

A Chicago engineer complained that he could not get 
14 per cent C0 2 without shutting down his plant. It was 
found that he reduced the draft to increase the C0 2 , and, 
of course, in doing so he reduced the steaming capacity of 
his boilers. Now had he followed the method indicated in 
this chapter he would have obtained an increased capacity. 
Had he stopped the air leaks and improved the conditions 
in his furnaces he would have raised the C0 2 and he would 
have had steam to sell. 

There is a relation between the draft that should be 
used and the resistance of the fuel on the grates. I have 
taken as high as 16 per cent C0 2 with no more than a 
trace of CO from marine boilers under forced draft during a 
speed trial at sea. The idea that high C0 2 calls for low 
draft is one of the many fictions current relating to com- 
bustion analysis. You can get high C0 2 with any draft in 
reason, either high or low, provided the draft and the fuel 
resistance are in proper relation. 

Bear in mind that the C0 2 percentage indicates the ratio 
of the air used to the air that has not been used. 

I can get 18 per cent C0 2 from a stinking old tobacco 
pipe that is one of my prized possessions, but if I should 
take the fire out of that pipe and put it under a boiler I 
couldn't get any steam with it. 

"Your steam plant is operated for the purpose of run- 
ning your power plant and not for the purpose of making 
C0 2 ." Why, sure. I admit it. And if you do the right 
thing r>y that steam plant the more C0 2 you make the more 
steam you will get from unit quantity of fuel and the more 
steam you make the less unit quantities of fuel you will 
burn. 

These propositions have gone past the point where they 
require defense. They are proved propositions. The physi- 
cal laws that govern combustion take sides with them. 

The C0 2 percentage is an index of efficiency and not of 
capacity, altho, as I have shown, it may be taken as a 
measure of capacity if the draft is not decreased to secure 
the increase in the C0 2 . But however the increase in the 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 87 

C0 2 is attained, it is a measure of efficiency — the volume 
of heat-nullifying cold air taken in comparison with the 
volume of heated gas developed by the process of combus- 
tion. 

Everything that I have said so far is based upon the as- 
sumption that there is no CO accompanying the C0 2 . 

When the air supply is insufficient or improperly dis- 
tributed, there will not be enough Oxygen to convert all 
of the Carbon to C0 2 . Some of it will have to be satis- 
fied with one part of Oxygen instead of two parts. The 
Carbon will be half burned and CO will result. CO is 
the "Bob-tail flush" of combustion. 

When Carbon is burned to C0 2 , 14,500 units of heat 
energy are released in the furnace. When it is burned 
to CO, 4,400 heat units are released and the remaining 
10,100 continue unreleased in the CO and with it ride up 
the chimney. So that when we are basing a judgment as 
to efficiency upon C0 2 percentages we must know whether 
or not CO is present and if it exists we must qualify 
our judgment. 

There is as much Carbon in a molecule of CO as in 
a molecule of C0 2 , so that if the gases show 9 per cent 
C0 2 and 1 per cent CO, 90 per cent of the combustible 
has been completely burned and 10 per cent partly burned. 
This 10 per cent carries away 10,100 heat units per pound 
of Carbon taken out of an original 14,500, so that the 
actual fuel loss represented by the CO in such case would 
be 10, 100-1 4,5 OOths of 10 per cent. From this statement 
you will be able to see how the following formula is de- 
rived : 

To find the loss due to CO in percentage terms of total 
carbon burned divide the percentage of CO by the sum of 
the C0 2 and CO percentages, multiply by 100, divide by 145 
and multiply by 101. 

Applying this formula to a case of 9 per cent C0 2 , and 
1 per cent CO, we find that the fuel loss due to the CO 
is 6.9 per cent. 

There has been much discussion in the engineering jour- 
nals as to the relative importance of the C0 2 and CO 
determinations in flue gas analysis. Some engineers even 



88 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

go so far as to recommend an analysis for CO every time 
the C0 2 determination is made. The main objection to 
this is that it takes a lot of time and means a lot of 
really unnecessary work. The sensible method is to first 
find out how to secure the desired percentage of C0 2 
and then to check the gas sample for CO. It will be 
found in most cases that when the C0 2 percentage has 
been made right the Oxygen and CO will fall into line 
and be right also. Of what concern is it to us if CO 
does in fact exist with a low percentage of C0 2 , say 6 
per cent? We don't want the CO, of course, neither do 
we want the 6 per cent C0 2 , consequently we are not 
concerned to find the reason why CO exists when we have 
6 per cent C0 2 . We want 14 per cent CO z if we can get 
it, and we want no CO with that 14 per cent. We might 
stand for a trace of it, but not for much more. To wipe 
out the undesired CO it may be necessary to increase the 
excess of air and thereby lower the C0 2 . But the CO 
may not owe its presence to lack of air. It may be due to 
lack of mixture or certain other causes that will land us 
in rather deep theory if we attempt to consider them.* 

Low C0 2 may be caused by lack of air as well as by 
a surplus of it, but the surplus is the cause in almost every 
instance. Whatever the cause for a drop in C0 2 the fur- 
nace temperature will drop with it. We may find CO with 
any percentage of C0 2 . Suppose that the "fire" is very 
thick and perhaps "dirty" in one portion of the furnace. 
This condition would result in the formation of CO be- 
cause not enough air could pass through the thick and 
dirty "fire" to reduce the Carbon to C0 2 . Now if there 
are air leaks in the fuel on another portion of the grate 
a large excess of air would be passed through them and 
we would have CO in the flue gases in the presence of an 
excess of air. 

I have heard it stated that we cannot get more than 
8 or 10 per cent C0 2 without inviting CO in consider- 
able quantity, but this is not in accordance with my experi- 
ence. I do not consider that we are courting danger from 



See "The Chemistry of Combustion," by the Author. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 89 

CO until we have reached about 15 per cent C0 2 . This 
statement is made upon the assumption that the boiler set- 
ting is tight and that there is sufficient draft for proper 
combustion. If the setting is leaky we might have to in- 
dulge in extremely thick "fires" to raise the C0 2 percent- 
age and this, as explained in the preceding paragraph, 
might produce CO while the air taken in through the 
setting would, of course, lower the C0 2 percentage by 
diluting the gas volume. 

If we are engaged in experimental or research work we 
must concern ourselves, not only with the C0 2 , but with 
the CO and S0 2 and with the Hydrogen and Methane 
as well. The operating engineer is not engaged in re- 
search investigations. He is engaged in making steam and 
he wants to make it as economically as possible. His plant 
is not operated under test conditions, but under severe 
working conditions. Hence, he must adopt in gas analysis, 
as in everything else, the methods that are applicable to 
the every-day grind of an every-day steam power plant. 
And he will secure amazing results if he will begin with 
C0 2 and stick to C0 2 . I do not mean that he should 
never make CO investigations. I insist that he should make 
them, but that he should select the right time for doing so 
and that time will not arrive until he has first placed his 
furnaces upon a proper C0 2 basis. 

It is a significant fact that some of the engineers who 
have accomplished the most with flue gas analysis, who 
have made savings as great as 40 and 50 per cent, have 
been non-technical men who have never gone farther in 
gas analysis than the C0 2 determination. They have pur- 
sued air leaks and studied draft regulation. They have 
"taken chances" on CO and it is not likely that much 
of it is to be found in their furnace gases. And I would 
back one of these men every time for real results in the 
boiler room against the man who is all "technical" — who is 
a mile long on theory and an inch long on practice. When 
such a man gets into the boiler room he will begin with 
CO studies and he will have to resort to formulae and other 
things that are mystifying. In other words, his work will 
be of a laboratory kind and of a research nature. And as 



90 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

a result of his methods a shroud of mystery will be thrown 
over the whole performance. Nobody in the fire-room 
will take any interest in the thing, hence no benefit will result 
from it. 

It will help very much if the engineer who is under- 
taking flue gas analysis will acquire some of the theory on 
which his practice is based — if he will learn a little of 
combustion chemistry, but it is not essential that he should 
know anything at all about the theory or the chemistry of 
it. It is essential that he should follow right methods and 
if he does this he will produce right results. 

The marksman need not know the chemical properties 
of the powder in the cartridge before making a bull's-eye. 
Neither is it necessary that an engineer or fireman should 
know what C0 2 really is, or why it is, before he begins 
work with a Gas Analyzer. A man who can read a ther- 
mometer scale can read that of a Gas Analyzer and if he 
will keep after the Analyzer until he gets the right read- 
ing he will get results that will surprise everybody about 
the plant — most of all the Manager. 

Don't carry a sample of gas in a bottle from the boiler 
room to the laboratory. Make your study of furnace con- 
ditions right at the furnace and make enough determina- 
tions to acquire some real data. When you have finished 
your investigations in the boiler room, say at the end of 
an hour, or at most two hours, reduce your data relating 
to C0 2 percentages, fuel thicknesses and drafts, to curves 
upon a chart and this will serve to show the very relations 
you have been seeking to discover. Knowing these relations 
you may proceed to standardize the operating methods in 
your boiler room and prescribe a rule of action for your 
firemen. 

I think it will now be plain how the answers to most 
of the questions proposed in the first chapter may be worked 
out. 

When you know how much fuel the furnace is wasting 
by heating excess air, how much it is dropping in the ash- 
pit and how much CO it is sending up the chimney, you 
come very near knowing the efficiency of that furnace. 

Employ the draft that will carry your load and pro- 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 91 

duce the highest percentage of C0 2 without CO. You must 
determine by actual experiment what that draft really is. 
With bituminous coal it w^ill probably be in the neighbor- 
hood of 30 hundredths of an inch over the fire. The more 
ash the coal contains the more draft you will have to use 
and the lower the maximum percentage of C0 2 that you 
will be able to get. Control the draft with the boiler 
damper rather than with the ash-pit doors. 

Calibrate all of your dampers. To do this connect a 
differential draft gage between the damper and the boiler. 
Place the damper in the extreme closed position. Then 
open it gradually. Mark the position of the damper when 
the draft gage is first affected. Continue opening the 
damper until the gage stops registering an increment in 
the draft. Mark this position and adjust the damper to 
work between those two positions. The slightest movement 
of the damper will then register its effect at the furnace and 
the effect will be proportional to the movement of the 
damper. You will meet some surprises when you calibrate 
your dampers. You will find in some cases that the damper 
is "wide open" when it is partly closed and in others that 
it is "partly closed" when it is wide open. A great deal 
will depend upon how the damper is hung and the direction 
of the normal gas flow with respect to the normal open posi- 
tion of the damper. It is of the highest importance that the 
main breeching damper should be calibrated before you 
hook it up to an automatic damper regulator. 

The advantages of a damper regulator are liable to be 
overestimated. A proper regulator will assist in securing 
economy. An improper one may actually increase the coal 
consumption although it may produce a perfect steam curve 
on the chart of the recording gage. 

Regulators may be divided into two general classes for 
the purposes of this discussion: 

1. The machines that move the damper a little when 
there is a slight change in the steam pressure, the movement 
of the damper being proportional to the change in pres- 
sure. 

2. The machines that swing the damper from the wide 
open position to the closed one when the pressure rises 



92 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

and from the closed position to the wide open one when the 
pressure falls. 

We must vote for the Regulators of the first class men- 
tioned because those of the second class do not meet the 
requirements of economial combustion. When the damper 
is wide open the furnaces will be getting too much air 
and the percentage of C0 2 will fall. When the damper is 
closed the furnaces will not get enough air and CO will 
be formed. Machines of the first class may not make as 
perfect a steam curve as those of the second, but they will 
show economy where the others may produce waste. 

To equalize the draft among the boilers, first see that the 
fires are all in standard condition — of the same thickness 
without air holes and free from clinkers. Then adjust the 
boilers' dampers so that all of the furnaces will have the 
same draft — your standard draft, whatever it may be. 
Thereafter you may regulate the draft to meet the load by 
shifting the main breeching damper. The draft will vary 
with changes of barometer, so that it may be necessary 
for the fireman to make certain damper adjustments every 
day, but these adjustments, so far as possible, should be 
confined to the master damper in the breeching and they 
will consist in altering the maximum open position of the 
damper for the day. 

I have shown how the air leakage through the setting 
may be measured by shifting the sampling pipe from the last 
pass to the first pass. Be sure that the fire is in good con- 
dition when the test is made and make the two determina- 
tions very close together, otherwise some condition affecting 
the air excess may intervene in the furnace and spoil the 
comparison. If the fuel on the grates is peppered with thin 
spots and air holes, a sample taken from the first pass may 
be misleading. Suppose for example that there is a large air 
leak in the fuel bed immediately below the intake end of 
the sampling pipe. A tornado of air will rush up through 
it and the Analyzer will report low C0 2 as a result of 
that air, whereas the actual average from the furnace might 
be a reasonably high percentage of C0 2 . And conversely, 
if you should take gas from a section of the furnace in 
which the fuel conditions were first class, while in all other 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 93 

sections they were poor, the report would be too high. Plug 
the air leaks in the setting and you will then have no 
occasion to measure the air flowing through them. 

The other questions relating to excess air may be an- 
swered by following the same general method of procedure. 

Don't neglect the marks on the liners of the furnace 
doors when you have learned how thick the particular coal 
you are burning should be carried on the particular grates 
you are using. 

The coal best adapted to your conditions is the coal that 
you can burn with the least surplus of air. You are limited, 
of course, by the fuels available in your market and you 
may be justified by price considerations in using the fuel 
not best adapted to your conditions. In planning a boiler 
plant the fuels available should receive more consideration 
than they are usually accorded and the equipment pur- 
chased should be selected with reference to the fuel that 
you ought to burn. 

Should the coal you are using be fired dry or wet for 
greatest efficiency? This will depend upon circumstances 
and the question will be answered by the Gas Analyzer. 

It takes heat units to evaporate the water that you have 
applied to the coal and the business of these heat units 
is to evaporate the water in the boiler. We must make an 
entry on the debit side of the ledger. 

When a shovelful of wet coal goes into the furnace, the 
first thing that happens is the evaporation of the surface 
moisture clinging to the coal. This is followed by the de- 
composition of the resulting steam into its elements, Oxygen 
and Hydrogen. The Hydrogen is next ignited and burns 
back again into water, returning to the furnace the exact 
amount of heat abstracted in the operation of decomposition. 
Some of this heat will be lost by radiation, more of it will 
be discarded to the chimney and some of the Hydrogen may 
escape without being consumed. There is, accordingly, a 
net loss by this operation. There is another debit. 

But there are credit entries also. Combustible gases are 
being evolved from the fuel. The Hydrogen flame assists 
in igniting them. When water and incandescent coke 
come into contact with each other there is an evolution 



94 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

of CO as well as of Hydrogen, the Oxygen of the water 
uniting with the Carbon of the coal to form Carbon Mon- 
oxide. This gas rises into the furnace chamber and burns 
with the Hydrogen. The area of combustion is extended 
and we have a flaming furnace through which no combustible 
gas can pass in the presence of Oxygen without burning. 

Fine coal, when thrown into the furnace, tends to "pack," 
particularly if it is dry and there is much ash and foreign 
matter in it. If it is wet, the water when it is converted 
into steam, will loosen the packed coal permitting the air 
to flow more reaidly through it. As a result the coal will 
burn more uniformly and you will burn more of it because 
there will be less combustible in the ash and clinker and 
much less combustible carried over by the draft into the 
combustion chamber. There will be fewer cracks in the 
fuel bed and the coal will be burned with a great deal less 
excess of air. 

It is impossible to burn some fine coals without wetting 
them. You can burn any fine coal with better results and 
more satisfaction if you turn the hose on the coal pile. Do 
you prefer to smoke your cigars damp or kiln dried? 

The grate surface is just right for highest economy when 
you can carry a proper fire upon it without blowing off 
the safety valve. The fire is not proper if it is so thin 
that too much unused air will pass through it and if you 
have too much grate surface you will either have a great 
excess of air or a popping safety valve. 

Smoke is due to one of four causes or to a combination 
of two or more them, viz.: 

1. Lack of air; 2, lack of mixture; 3, lack of tempera- 
ture, and 4, lack of space. Now before blowing yourself 
to steam jets or some other cure-all device for preventing 
smoke it would be wise to discover why your chimney is 
smoking. 

If the boiler setting is tight and the gases show no more 
than 12 per cent C0 2 , there is an abundance of air and 
nothing will result by admitting more of it except to lower 
efficiency. 

If the furnace is white hot there is plenty of tempera- 
ture. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 95 

If there is an abundance of air (free oxygen) in the gases 
and you find CO, the trouble is insufficient mixture. The 
air is being taken in at the wrong place, or the design of 
the furnace is such that the air taken is not caused to mix 
with the combustible gases. The difficulty may be remedied 
or ameliorated by the use of mixing piers or arches. 

Lack of space is probably the most common of all the 
causes of smoke. The grates must be at such a distance 
below the heating surfaces of the boiler that the flame will 
be burned out before the relatively cold metal is reached. 
Take any cold substance, a piece of glass for instance, and 
hold it in the flame of a gas jet. There will be a deposit 
of carbon at once. If your smoke is caused by the snuffing 
out of the flame upon the cold surfaces of the boiler you 
will find very little CO in the gases, perhaps none whatever, 
although there may be a great quantity of soot. 

"Smoke means waste," of course, but as I have already 
pointed out, there is very little fuel value in the finely 
divided carbon that colors the chimney gases. A chimney 
that is making no smoke at all may be throwing out more 
actual combustible gas than one that is a bad smoker. 

But assuming that there is an appreciable quantity of 
real combustible in the chimney gases. Can we eliminate 
it without sustaining a loss that exceeds the saving? If you 
save $2.00 by burning up the combustible gases and lose 
$4.00 by heating the excess air that is incidental to the 
process, how much of a gainer are you? To burn soft coal 
smokelessly is a simple matter, but to burn it smokelessly 
and at the same time economically is up another street al- 
together. If the men who are selling "smokeless furnaces" 
were compelled to put their devices up against a Gas An- 
alyzer, nine-tenths of them would go out of business. 

There was a time when the Smoke Inspector was not 
concerned in the methods by which you attained smoke- 
lessness. You could equip with steam jets or any other 
make-shift, wasteful thing so long as you stopped violating 
the ordinances. And the result of this was that the Inspector 
was an Ishmael among the power producers. His hand was 
against every man and the hand of every man was against 
him. It is a cheerful sign that the times have changed when 



96 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




The way your R. T. boiler is 'set" and the wrong way to set it — 
the grates 28 in. from the boiler shell and the combustion chamber partly 
filled in. You can't help smoking. 




D 



f- ; I T^+vl^^'-'fy 



o 



frl=M---.-r-H..-'T l J I 1~~T 




Pill 



TT- 



^-Av'f-::::.^ 



\ ^ ■■-■■ -t l. ^'-fr^ 



£3 



The way your boiler should be set to burn bituminous coal — the grates 
about 48 in. from the boiler shell. A "roomy" combustion chamber. 
Note the flat arch at the rear.* 



*For a detailed discussion of smokeless furnaces see "Com- 
bustion and Smokeless Furnaces" by the author. 



How to Stop Your Fuel Wastes. 



97 



the Inspector now visits the plant in the role of a helper 
rather than that of a fault finder. He comes to advise and 
while he insists upon smokelessness, he wants to see you get 
smokelessness done up in a wrapper of efficiency. 

And don't assume that your boiler plant is efficient because 
your chimney is not smoking. Show me a chimney that 
never makes a trace of smoke and I will show you a plant 
that is not burning coal efficiently. 

The territory between no smoke — no combustible of any 
kind in the gases — and highest efficiency is fixed by very 









5000 

5 
z 

z 

M 
■ 
Z 
< 

2 4000 

M 
C 

a 

M 
O 

M 

C 
O 

J 3000 

M 
O 

< 

z 
c 
o 

2000 










( 


\ 








































/ 


\ 






































f 


\ 


\ 


































/ 






\ 
































/ 








\ 


\ 






























/ 










\ 




























/ 








































/ 






































_J 


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2 








































f 








































t^ 
































































































































































5 


100 150 200 25 

PER CENT Or NORMAL AIR SUPPLY 






The highest furnace temperature is attained when the theoretical air 
supply (100 per cent) is applied. Furnace temperatures fall very rapidly, 
as shown, when the supply is increased or diminished from this figure. 



narrow boundary lines. Let us draw a horizontal line and 
consider it as lying in the plane of highest efficiency — com- 
plete combustion with the minimum supply of excess air. 
Above this line is the territory of unnecessary excess air, and 
below it the territory of air deficiency. The higher we go 
above this line the more of a "hot air factory" we are run- 



98 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

ning. The farther we go below it the more smoke and CO 
we are making. If we remain in the neighborhood of the 
line, fluctuating furnace conditions will place us first on one 
side of it and then on the other. There will be periods 
of no smoke, succeeded by periods of slight smokiness. Con- 
ditions like this at the top of the chimney usually point to 
economical furnace operation. If there is no smoke at 
all we have no means of knowing by mere stack observation 
to what extent the furnace may be indulging in excess air. 

The Gas Analyzer will answer any strictly combustion 
question that may be propounded to it. It applies to Gas 
Producers and "Internal Combustion Motors," but its uses 
in these connections cannot here be considered by the author.* 

The higher the percentage of C0 2 , in the absence of CO, 
the higher the initial furnace temperature. And as a general 
proposition, the higher the furnace temperature the greater 
the efficiency. Extreme temperatures are destructive of brick 
work but they are not liable to damage the tubes or sheets 
of the boiler, provided there are no deposits of scale, mud, oil 
or other materials that will prevent intimate contact between 
the water and the metal. Some engineers are afraid of burn- 
ing up their boilers, and boilers are sometimes "bagged" and 
burned but the trouble can invariably be traced to scale or 
oil. Why you can take a paper oyster pail, fill it with water, 
set it in the blue flame of a gas burner and boil eggs without 
marking the paper except along the folds where the water is 
not in actual contact with the paper. If you will try this ex- 
periment you will cease to be afraid of high temperatures, 
but you will be more than ever afraid of scale and oil. You 
simply can't burn a clean boiler tube if there is water in 
actual contact with it. 

High temperatures promote smokelessness, because tem- 
perature is one of the requisites of smokeless combustion. 
When the furnace salesman approaches you, find out how 
much C0 2 he will guarantee without making CO, — not how 
much water he will evaporate. If he guarantees high C0 2 
he is guaranteeing furnace efficiency and incidentally agreeing 
to meet one of the conditions of smokeless combustion. 



*See Volume IV, "The Chemistry of Combustion" by the 
Author. 



t 

CHAPTER V. 

HOW TO KEEP THE WASTES STOPPED. 

When the levee breaks along the lower Mississippi they 
stop the leak with sand bags and niggers. And they stay 
on the job as long as there is high water, because it is one 
thing to stop a leak and another thing to keep it stopped. 
It is always high water in your boiler room. If you want 
fuel economy, first stop the fuel wastes and then sit on 
the stopper. It is one thing to attain efficiency and another 
thing to maintain it. If you kiss the fireman and say "good- 
bye" when you are through with your stopping operations, 
every waste, within the man's control, that you have killed 
will resurrect itself and renew its operations. 

Neither the Manager nor the Engineer can stay in the 
boiler room and watch the fireman. Some means must be 
devised for keeping a check upon him. Human nature will 
do better work, no matter what the field of endeavor, if it 
is completely surrounded by some effective checking system. 
You know this and you have time clocks and various other 
checking devices in your factory. You check the output 
of each man and machine, both as to quantity and quality. 
You inspect operations in the factory until you are black in 
the face, but the black-faced man in the boiler room knows 
that his operations will not receive inspection. Hence he 
is a careless and wasteful individual, just as I have de- 
scribed him and exactly as you know him. 

I assisted in the "spotting" and stopping operations in 
an Ohio boiler room last November. We calked the boiler 
setting and jacked the C0 2 up from 4 per cent to 14 per 
cent. We showed the fireman what the air leaks in the 
fuel bed had been doing to efficiency and we made him under- 
stand what we were saying. The meeting was adjourned 
after an interesting hour and a half and I returned to the 
office with the Manager. We talked for a little while and 

99 



loo How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

then I said, "111 bet you five dollars we can go down to the 
boiler room right now and find the same old 'rat holes' 
in the fire/' We caught the fireman unawares and we found 
them. It was laughable to see the way the man unlimbered 
himself to stop them. He had neglected to pull the calk- 
ing out of the air holes in the boiler setting, which was 
probably an oversight, for in every other particular he had 
reverted things to their original condition. My friend, the 
Manager, jettisoned his entire cargo of religion on the spot 
and swore like a mule driver. 

It takes some of the stuff that sustained the martyrs to 
deal with a fireman. It won't help to swear at him and 
refer to his ancestry. Neither will it serve to employ verbal 
chocolate caramels. The man has a lot of bad habits, — 
that is all that ails him, and it may be as hard for him to 
quit them as it is for you to carry out your New Year's 
resolutions. 

You can make a real good fireman out of the poorest 
stick that ever held a shovel. It is just a matter of method, 
and I have promised to tell you about the methods that 
other men have found successful in dealing with their fire- 
men. I have also promised to show how fuel waste may be 
stopped by the "fiat" of the Manager. It is up to me to 
make good in spite of the difficulties that I have just placed 
in my own pathway. 

If you want a really good fireman in short order, go and 
get a husky fellow that never fired a boiler. Start him right 
and he will think that there is just one way to do it. He 
won't know how to waste your fuel. Give me a green boy 
from the farm and I will turn him into an expert fireman 
in 48 hours. There is just that little to learn about the 
business. But you can't always raise your fireman from a 
pup. You may have to take whatever material you can find 
or whatever is sent you by the fireman's union. This is 
unfortunate, because it is easier to turn a new man into a 
real expert than it is to break an old fireman of just one 
bad, wasteful habit. 

Three steps must be taken to stop your fuel wastes and 
institute economy, viz.: 

1. You must find the causes of loss and the means of 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 101 

stopping the losses. I have mentioned the apparatus and 
the methods of procedure. 

2. You must make sure that the fireman fully under- 
stands what is expected of him and you must have the means 
of checking the fireman. You must be able to tell each fire- 
man at the end of the day how much fuel he has saved 
by carrying out your instructions, or how much fuel he has 
wasted by disregarding them. Commendation, when merited, 
is quite as important as criticism. 

3. You must give the fireman some incentive to exert 
himself to the limit in the interest of efficiency. And the 
exertion called for does not mean extra labor for the fire- 
man. It means less labor but it also means increased care 
and watchfulness. 

Now r how can you remain in your office and accomplish 
these three things by what I have termed, "fiat?" 

You can submit the 20 questions, suggested in the first 
chapter, to your engineer as a starter, and ask for a specific 
answer to each one of them. Your "fiat" will go that far 
and you can tell whether the engineer is "guessing" or an- 
swering. 

If he needs apparatus for testing purposes, your "fiat" will 
prevail with the purchasing agent. And after the apparatus 
has arrived you can say to the engineer, — "Here are the tools 
with which you are to produce fuel economy. Get busy." 
And you can go and have a look and see if he is busy. No- 
body has the small-pox in your boiler room. It will be safe 
for you to go down there for a few minutes and watch these 
interesting "spotting" and stopping operations. 

And after the checking system has been instituted your 
"fiat" will bring the daily chart or daily report on the fire- 
men to your office. If it is not waiting for you in the morn- 
ing you can send for the engineer and heat up the grid-iron. 

If it seems advisable to capitalize economy in your boiler 
room and make your firemen stockholders in the enterprise, 
your "fiat" will establish a bonus system. If you do not 
want to pay a bonus, your "fiat" will place a blackboard 
in the boiler room on which the daily records of each man 
and each watch can be posted. The baseball score will be 
unable to compete with that blackboard for interest. When 



102 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

you play each watch against every other watch, and each fire- 
man against every other fireman, fuel economy becomes a 
sporting proposition. Your ingenuity may suggest other ex- 
pedients to increase the interest of the game, — for example: 
You can put all of the white men on one watch and the 
niggers and the Irish on another. Being an Irishman myself 
I know that such division would lead to spirited competition. 

Fuel economy, Mr. Manager, must be instituted and 
maintained by your "fiat" and it cannot be instituted and 
maintained in any other manner. As explained in the first 
chapter, when I use the term "Manager," I am referring to 
the person who is the court of last resort on all matters per- 
taining to the power department, — the man to whom the 
engineer must go when he wants to buy anything or to do 
anything out of the routine order. In some establishments, 
the Chief Engineer himself is this court of last resort, and 
in such cases he is the man to whom I am referring when I 
say "Manager." 

The "Manager," whoever he may be, must start things 
on the road to betterment and he can make betterment 
"stay put" when it is achieved by causing whatever check- 
ing system he may adopt to be treated as a part of the daily 
routine. No other method will get you anywhere. What 
applies to the establishment of any other factory reform or 
innovation, applies in this case also. 




They 9 re Making Fun of "Pete." 
He's the Lowest on the List. 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 103 

How shall we check the "fireman" and make sure that he 
is really following the methods that will produce the most 
steam with the least fuel? 

Flue gas analysis serves two purposes in the boiler room, 
viz.: 

First: It points out the errors of furnace management. 
It locates the wastes of energy, assigns the causes and sug- 
gests the remedies. It assists in "building up" furnace effi- 
ciency. This building up operation is like any other one. It 
is a case of one brick upon another until the structure is com- 
pleted. 

Second: It serves as a check upon the furnace and the 
fireman and maintains the efficiency structure after the build- 
ing has been finished. 

I must not be understood to mean that combustion analysis 
has no limitations in the good that it can accomplish in the 
boiler room. No furnace can be operated under ideal con- 
ditions, for reasons that are known to every operating en- 
gineer. The load fluctuates and the moods of the coal dealer 
are subject to changes. These things must be taken as they 
come and we must make the most of them. Many engineers 
take the following position and it seems to me quite un- 
tenable: "With our ragged load line, our rotten coal and 
our poor firemen we are up against it and we can make no 
pretensions of economy. The methods recommended would 
work out very well in most plants but it would be useless 
to attempt them in ours." 

It seems to me that the harder the conditions are in the 
boiler room, the more important it is that an effort be made 
to correct them. The sicker you are the more you need the 
help of medicine. Suppose it is impossible to place your plant 
upon as high a plane of efficiency as that enjoyed by your 
neighbor? The savings actually possible to you may be far 
greater than your neighbor can make, and a dollar is a dol- 
lar wherever you find it. 

A few years ago I was called to a down-town plant in 
Chicago. It was mid-summer and there was very little use 
for steam. There was one large boiler in service and it was 
being operated at only about 20 per cent of its capacity. 
The boiler was served by a type of stoker that made a re- 



104 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

duction of grate surface impossible. The plant needed a 
small boiler unit for the summer load, but it didn't have one. 
The flue gases were carrying only 2 per cent C0 2 , which 
you will find on reference to the charts and tables given 
elsewhere indicated a preventable loss of nearly three-quarters 
of the fuel burned. We were able to get 4 per cent with 
very little trouble and without lifting the safety valves, 
but we could not get more than that without blowing off 
steam. 

The engineer said, "What's the use? I am as much 
ashamed of 4 per cent as 2 per cent." The use was just 
this: That 2 per cent increase in C0 2 meant a saving of 
about 43 per cent of the fuel, and while at 4 per cent there 
was still a waste of 31 per cent that he could not avoid, the 
43 per cent that he could stop was mighty well worth going 
after. 

If you are in the bad lands of engineering and can get 
where the lands are not quite so bad, it is your duty to 
emigrate. You would be foolish to stay where you are 
just because you can't reach the land of Beulah. The best 
anybody can do is to do the best he can do and it is a fool- 
ish man who will not try at all because he knows the ideal 
is unattainable. 

I regard the simple hand manipulated Gas Analyzer as 
indispensable to the steam power plant. You can "build 
up" with it and when this has been done you can check the 
fireman with it provided you have some satisfactory means 
of collecting an average gas sample. 

The Instrument shown elsewhere was designed by the 
author expressly for the class of work in the boiler room 
that has been described in these pages. It is a modified form 
of the well known laboratory Orsat. The laboratory fea- 
tures have been eliminated and other features have been 
added which adapt the apparatus for the engineer's uses. A 
determination of C0 2 may be made in 45 seconds with this 
Instrument. 

The drawing shows the principle of the Orsat Analyzer 
as designed by the chemist, Orsat, about 50 years ago. An 
explanation is appended to it. In speaking of the Orsat it 
is only fair to mention the Hempel and Elliot Gas Analyzers, 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 105 



Illustration Showing the 

"Orsat" Principle of 

Gas Analysis. 



The gas to be analyzed is 
taken into the "burette" "B" 
the cock "Bl," being opened 
for the purpose. The "Level- 
ing Bottle" "L" is filled with 
water. "L" is then raised 
with the hand and water 
flows from it through the 
connecting rubber tube into 
«'B," "seeking its level."*'Bl" 
is closed when the water 
reaches the zero mark on the 
scale etched on "B." The 
water levels in "B" and "L" 
should then be in the same 
horizontal plane, thus giving 
a measurement at atmos- 
pheric pressure of the exact 
gas sample called for by the 
"burette." 



Engineer's Gas Analyzer, 
— a modified form of 
"Orsat" designed by the 
author. 





"A" is charged with a gas absorbing 
liquid. The cock "Al" is opened and 
"L" raised, the water driving the gas from 
"B" into "A," displacing the liquid in the 
latter. The CO2 contained in the gas is ab. 
sorbed by the liquid and this causes a con- 
traction in the gas sample. The gas remain- 
ing is then pulled back into "B" by lowering 
the Leveling Bottle. The chemical (Caustic 
Potash solution) must be drawn up into 
the capillary tube at the top of "A" before 
the cock **A1'' is closed. 

The bottle "L" is then held in such 
position that the surface of the water is in 
the same horizontal plane as that of the 
water in "B." This places the gas under 
atmospheric pressure and the reading 
is taken. 

Additional absorber pipettes, similar 
to "A," are connected by a manifold with 
"B" and charged with the proper solutions 
if Oxygen and CO are to be determined. 



io6 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

which together with several others are obtainable of any 
laboratory supply house. 

All of the present methods of Gas Analysis by absorp- 
tion have been in use for a half a century in the laboratory. 
These methods were devised long before any one dreamed 
of using a Gas Analyzer in the boiler room and hence the 
laboratory features. The author worked with all of these 
Instruments prior to designing his own apparatus, and was 
driven by the exigencies of the situation to devise some- 
thing suited to the requirements of the boiler room. 

About eight years ago the author began experimenting 
with devices to collect average gas samples. When the fire- 
man has been shown how to produce 14 or 15 per cent C0 2 
it is essential, if you would maintain any sort of check upon 
him, to know at the end of the day how much C0 2 he has 
in fact produced on the average during the day. To this 
end a device to draw a continuous stream of gas into a 
receptacle at a uniform rate throughout whatever period the 
fireman may be on watch, is necessary. It is an easy matter 
to get gas into a can or bottle and get it out again for analy- 
sis. All you have to do is to connect the bottle at the top 
by a tube with the flue through which the gas is passing, 
fill the bottle with water and allow the water to run out 
slowly from the bottle. As the water head falls gas is 
drawn into the bottle. This is the principle upon which 
all gas collecting devices have been based and the trouble 
with it is that it requires considerable modification before 
it can be used. To collect an average gas sample is one 
of the hard things that look easy and unless the sample 
is an average one it may be very misleading. 

The rate at which water will flow from a tank or bottle 
depends upon two things, viz., — the opening through which 
the water is allowed to escape and the head of water above 
the opening. As the head falls the rate of outflow decreases 
and it is plain to be seen that the inflow of gas depends upon 
the outflow of water. 

The author's first experiments with Gas Collectors were 
conducted at the plant of one of the brewing companies in 
Chicago. He produced a really ridiculous contrivance and 
abandoned it at the end of the first day. It is shown in 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 107 



How the Author Made a Fool of Himself 

The illustration shows the Author's first Gas Collecting de- 
vice, referred to on another page. Water was allowed to drain 
from the upper bottle into the lower one, the rate of flow 
being fixed by a pinch clamp on the connecting rubber tube. 
As the water fell gas was drawn in through the tube U C" 

It was intended that the lower bottle should be set upon the 
upper shelf, as shown by the dotted lines in the illustration, 




when ready to analyze the gas sample. The clamp on the tube 
"C" could then be closed and the one on the connecting rubber 
tube removed. Water would then flow by gravity back into 
the first bottle and drive the gas out through the tube "D" to 
the Gas Analyzer. 

The trouble with this arrangement was that on the start 
of the gas collecting operation the water stood at "A" in the 
upper bottle and at "Al" in the lower bottle, while at the con- 
clusion of the operation the levels were at "B" and "Bl" re- 
spectively. These differences in head defeated the object of 
the device, that of collecting an AVERAGE gas sample. 



io8 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 




Gas Collector, with Water Flow Regulator 

(Designed by the Author) 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 109 

the sketch preceding. The thing took gas many times 
faster on the start than on the finish, so that it was utterly 
impossible to say at the end of the watch what the real 
average for the watch had been. The only case in which 
such a device could be used would be where the percentage 
of C0 2 is uniform throughout the entire watch and in such 
case it would be unnecessary to employ a Gas Collector at 
all as a single snap shot sample taken at any time during 
the day would provide the necessary information. Unhap- 
pily the C0 2 percentage is constantly fluctuating and if we 
would know the real efficiency of the fireman we must know 
the real average produced by him. When he is cleaning 
fires a large excess of air will be taken and this will of 
course affect the sample collected. It will be seen that it 
would make a lot of difference whether the Collector was 
running fast or slow during the cleaning operation. In 
some plants there are many periods during the day when 
the boilers are hit with unusual loads and other periods 
when the loads are extremely light. Extraordinary care 
must be exercised by the fireman at these times or he will 
waste a great deal of fuel. It is very obvious that with 
such a gas collecting scheme as the author first devised the 
engineer would be quite unable to say what the fireman's 
efficiency had been. 

Some men have to be hit with a brick before they can 
see anything and a good sized one hit the author when he 
stood in front of his first gas collector and watched it 
operate. The thing started with quite a respectable outflow 
of water. By the end of the second hour the stream had 
slowed down to a drizzle pizzle. From then on the rate of 
discharge suffered a constant decrease. 

Any school-boy student of physics would have been able 
to predict this result because every school-boy knows that 
the pressure at the outflow opening depends upon the head 
of water above the opening. In this case the author had a 
falling head of water in the upper bottle and a rising head 
of water in the lower one. 

Since that time the author has designed a number of gas 
collecting devices, all of them equipped with flow-regulators. 
One of these is shown in the illustration on the preceding 
page. 



io How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 





The Recording Gage 



The Automatic Analyzer 

Automatic CO2 and Draft Recorder 

(Designed by the Author) 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 1 1 1 




What a CO2 Recorder Chart looks like 

The automatic C0 2 Recorder may be substituted for the 
Gas Collector if desired, but it is, of course, more expen- 
sive. It produces a graphic chart which shows the fluctua- 
tions in the C0 2 content of the gases throughout the day. 
The author has designed a Recorder which will be found 
illustrated on another page. 

The Collector has the following advantages over the 
Recorder : 

1. The cost is much lower and it is possible to equip an 
entire boiler plant with Collectors at the expense of equip- 
ping one boiler with a Recorder. You cannot expect 100 
per cent results unless you have a 100 per cent equipment 
and anything less than an equipment for each boiler is 
less than 100 per cent. 

Suppose, for example, that you have a checking device, 
either a Collector or a Recorder on but one boiler. The 
firemen will know which boiler is being checked and that 
boiler will get most of the attention. The result may be 



ii2 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

that the over-all efficiency of the plant is less than before 
the equipment was put in use. The firemen may so neg- 
lect the furnaces that are not being checked in order to 
make a good showing on the one that is under supervision, 
that the result may be an actual fuel loss instead of a fuel 
saving. In such a case the apparatus would work to fool 
the Manager and Engineer of the plant rather than to 
check the fireman. 

2. When you have a Collector or Recorder on each 
boiler the firemen cannot play favorites and if one boiler 
furnace does not perform as well as another and persists in 
its failure you may presume with considerable assurance 
that an air leak has developed somewhere or that some- 
thing else beyond the jurisdiction of the fireman has inter- 
vened. You will look into that boiler and find the trouble. 

There should be a draft gage connected with each 
boiler furnace so that the fireman will be able to equalize 
the drafts. The' gage will further assist the fireman by 
indicating when the fuel bed has burned down too thin or 
has developed air leaks. The gage will show a marked 
drop in the draft under such circumstances. The fireman 
will learn in a short time to watch the draft gage as he 
watches the steam and water gages. 

3. It is quite essential at times to check the furnace gases 
for the average CO as well as C0 2 . This is possible where 
the Gas Collectors are employed. It is impossible where 
C0 2 Recorders are used. 

4. The average C0 2 cannot be determined closely from 
a C0 2 Recorder chart. It can be determined very closely 
by analysis of the gas trapped in the Collector. And it is 
quite essential that you should know the average, especially 
if the percentage is low. By referring to the tables pre- 
viously given, you will note that in the lower ranges of 
C0 2 every fraction of a per cent counts for something. If 
your firemen are reducing the preventable loss, even at as 
slow a pace as one per cent of coal a day you have reason 
for rejoicing. They will get there in 25 days if they 
keep it up, provided your waste is 25 per cent. You want 
to know whether you are progressing, standing still or retro- 
grading. This you can learn by means of the hand Analyzer 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 113 

and Gas Collector. When you compare two C0 2 Recorder 
charts you will have some trouble to determine which is 
really the best if the charts are anywhere near alike as to 
averages. 

The above are the advantages of the Gas Collector over 
the Recorder. 

The advantage of the Recorder lies in the fact that it 
produces a graphic chart, which shows not only what hap- 
pened, but when it happened. The chart may also be made 
to show the draft and the temperature of the escaping flue 
gases by combining with the C0 2 recording gage the 
necessary draft and temperature recording apparatus. Such 
a combined chart would accordingly show any relation that 
might exist between the C0 2 , the draft and the temperature 
of the escaping gases. 

C0 2 Recorders have been upon the American market for 
about eight years and it is putting it mildly to say that 
they have given themselves a black eye in steam power 
plants. Both eyes have in fact been decorated. The cir- 
cumstancs are unfortunate and they are due to the follow- 
ing causes: 

1st. The inherent defects in the earlier Recorders, 
which the author is pleased to say have now been largely 
remedied in most of the later Recorders and entirely reme- 
died in some of them. 

2nd. Failure on the part of Recorder manufacturers to 
explain, and failure on the part of Recorder purchasers to 
understand, what the real functions and limitations of the 
C0 2 Recorder are. 

As a result of these two things C0 2 Recorders have a 
bad reputation and it takes, time to live that sort of a 
reputation down. You will find hundreds of Recorders 
standing unused today in the dark corners of steam power 
plants and if you wish to make some power men see red all 
that you have to do is to mention C0 2 Recorders. 

The C0 2 Recorder has been greatly overestimated by the 
manufacturers and it is at present greatly misunderstood 
by the public. It is high time for somebody to stand up 
and spit out the facts about the apparatus. I shall endeavor 
to write the truth in as unprejudiced a manner as possible. 



H4 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

If you will talk with many of the engineers who have 
used C0 2 Recorders you will get this sort of an expression 
from them: 

"The Recorder would probably be all right and help us a 
great deal if it would only 'run.' The one we have never 
ran long enough to give us a line on anything.'' 

Any apparatus that requires a couple of college professors 
in constant attendance to keep it in operation has no place 
in a steam power plant. We may even go so far as to say 
that any recording apparatus that requires more than the 
irreducible minimum of attention has no business in an 
engine room and less than no business in a boiler room. 

The requisites of a practical C0 2 Recorder are as fol- 
lows: 

1. It must "stay put" and keep on running indefinitely 
after it has been started. 

2. It must require no attention other than that neces- 
sary to change the chart, renew the chemicals and change the 
filtering material in the gas line. 

3. It must be automatic in all particulars, including the 
adjustments that are necessary to compensate for changes of 
temperature, changes of volume and of specific gravity, in 
the absorbent solution, changes of draft in the boiler, etc. 
In other words the apparatus must look after itself and 
take care of all of the variables with w T hich a C0 2 Recorder 
is forced to contend. 

4. There must be the minimum of moving reciprocating 
parts. The less there are of them the longer the apparatus 
will "stay put," because it is in the nature of mechanical 
contrivances to get out of order, especially when they are 
of the delicate nature demanded in an apparatus of the 
kind considered. 

In some of the earlier Recorders there were as many 
as 50 points of adjustment and it required an expert ad- 
juster to keep the apparatus in proper operation. Some of 
the modern Recorders have no points of manual adjustment 
whatever and no mechanical parts whatever. It is accord- 
ingly possible today to secure an apparatus that will meet 
the requirements as above set forth. 

In soliciting proposals from the manufacturers of C0 2 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 115 

Recorders the author suggests that guaranties be asked upon 
the following points: 

1. The length of time that the apparatus will be guar- 
anteed to operate properly without attention other than that 
required to change the chart, renew the chemical for ab- 
sorbing the C0 2 and change the filtering material used to 
clean the gas. 

2. The annual cost of upkeep, including the cost for 
charts and chemicals. 

A statement should also be asked as to the method of 
controlling the variables of temperature, etc., referred to 
in a preceding paragraph, the number of the points of 
adjustment about the apparatus and the extent to which 
movable mechanical parts are employed. 

With the information on the points suggested in hand 
you will know which apparatus to purchase and where to 
get it. 

The earlier Recorders failed, first because of inherent de- 
fects in the Recorders themselves and second because the 
apparatus, when it did work, could not live up to the claims 
made for it by the manufacturers, 

Now, what are the functions of a C0 2 Recorder? 

The apparatus is a watchman and a good one but no 
more. It will help you to keep the wastes stopped after 
you have first "spotted" them and stopped them. It will 
help you to maintain efficiency after you have attained it. 
It is not the proper apparatus for "diagnosing" combus- 
tion troubles or "building up furnace" efficiency. I do not 
say that you cannot diagnose or build up with it. I say 
that it is not the proper apparatus for that purpose and I 
make that statement because with a hand analyzer I can do 
more "diagnosing" and "building up" in an hour than I 
can do with a C0 2 Recorder in a month, and I can diag- 
nose some things with the hand Instrument that I could not 
attempt at all with a Recorder. There is no sense in wait- 
ing a month for the information that you can obtain in an 
hour and there is no sense in paying a high price for an 
unsuitable "diagnosing" apparatus when vou can get one 
at a low price that is exactly adapted to the work required. 

The C0 2 Recorder will tell you in what way the fireman 



n6 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

has carried out your instructions, whether he has observed 
the methods that your investigations with the hand Instru- 
ment have proved to be necessary. It will spur each one 
of your firemen to his best efforts because it is human na- 
ture to be more careful when there is a watchman looking 
on. It is human nature to hustle when the race is on with 
another man. 

There is a C0 2 Recorder in an Eastern power plant 
and considerable competition among the firemen. One of 
the men succeeded in making a particularly good record and 
he led his fellows to the Recorder gage, exhibited the chart 




Differential Draft Gage 

(Designed by the Author) 

and invited them to "Go to it and beat that/' While none 
of them succeeded in beating it, some of them did succeed 
in measuring up to it. 

With the hand Instrument you can make sure that your 
boiler setting is in proper condition, — you can test here, 
there and wherever you wish with it. You can, as I have 
explained, look at the furnace when you look at the Instru- 
ment and you can refer the result of each analysis to the 
observed furnace conditions that produced the result. You 
cannot do this with a Recorder. Don't let any salesman 
persuade you that you can. 

It takes time to get the gas from the boiler to the Re- 
corder. It must flow through a considerable length of 
pipe and through soot filters. There is necessarily some 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 117 

"lag" on this account. The "lag" may be anywhere from 
two minutes to fifteen minutes. The less of it the better. 
On account of this the fireman cannot guide his operations 
by any C0 2 Recorder chart or by any "C0 2 Indicator" 
accessory to the Recorder. To be sure, the Chart and the 
Indicator of the Recorder will tell the fireman that there 
is a hole in the fire, but it will report the information any- 
where from 2 to 15 minutes after the hole began business. 
A differential draft gage will report the hole the instant 
that the hole appears and the fireman can get instant action. 
You need gages for the purpose of draft equalization as 
set forth in a previous chapter. Have your firemen rely 
upon them as indicators of furnace conditions. Any manu- 
facturer of C0 2 Recorders will be glad to supply you with 
a C0 2 Indicator if you are foolish enough to order such an 
attachment. Don't order it because it is liable to do more 
harm than good. It will report a hole in the fire after the 
fireman has fixed the hole and it will report a good fire when 
there are in fact holes that need stopping. This is due to 
the necessary time interval that intervenes between the 
taking of the gas from the boiler and the report on that 
gas by the Recorder. 

I repeat that the functions of the Recorder are those of 
a watchman. Let it watch the fireman for you and let the 
fireman watch his fires. If he does that, the Recorder will 
make a good report upon him. Watching the chart of 
the Recorder will assist the fireman to some extent, as it 
will show him the result of what he did some minutes ago. 
In other words it will enable him to work out things if he 
has the intelligence to observe, interpret and draw conclu- 
sions. But I maintain that it is better to show the fireman, 
by means of object lessons with the hand Analyzer, what is 
and what is not a proper "fire," also what is and what is 
not the proper draft for that fire. Thereafter let the fire- 
man watch the fires and the draft gage and set your C0 2 
Recorder to watch him. This will keep the fireman reason- 
ably busy and if he attends to business the Recorder will 
have a good report to make upon him. 

There should be one C0 2 Recorder for each boiler, but 
this may mean more of an expenditure than you care to 



n8 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

incur. One Recorder for a battery of boilers may prove a 
serious mistake, unless the piping is so arranged that the 
firemen will have no means of knowing from which boiler 
the gas is being drawn. Suppose, for example, that you 
were a fireman and that you knew the Recorder to be 
working on the gas from Number 1 boiler. In spite of 
yourself you would give more attention to that boiler than 



3 4 



^H3 — o-D\ 




Arrangement of Piping Enabling One Recorder to Serve a 
Battery of Four Boilers 

to any other one. You would want to produce a good 
chart because you would know that the Manager and Engi- 
neer would inspect that chart. But if you had no means of 
knowing which boiler the Recorder might be reporting upon, 
you would take no chances. You would give the same at- 
tention to all boilers, and doing this you would be sure to 
produce a good chart. 

Your Recorder or your Gas Collector will work upon but 
one boiler at a time. If you have several boilers in operation 
and but one Recorder, run the individual gas pipes into a 
common header. Place a valve on each gas pipe near the 
header and box the valves in such a way that the firemen 
will have no means of knowing which valve is open. Then 
switch the Recorder from time to time and you will have a 
reasonably good check on the entire plant, though not so 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 119 

good a one as you would have if you were provided with a 
full equipment of Recorders. 

If you wish to establish a bonus system in your fire-room, 
and such a system always brings results where all else fails, 
an equipment of Collectors will be in some respects better 
adapted to your purpose than Recorders, because your 
bonuses must be paid on averages and the Collector deals 
in averages at the expense of details, whereas the Recorder 
deals in details at the expense of averages. You can get 
the approximate averages by running a planimeter over the 
Recorder charts, but you can get the exact average within 
one-fifth. of a per cent C0 2 by analyzing the gas trapped 
in the Collector. When using the Collectors you must de- 
pend upon some one to make the analyses. If that person 
turns in false reports, either designedly or otherwise, your 
bonus system will be unfair to some of the firemen and 
unfair to yourself. The Recorder will turn in a correct 
report within the limits of its accuracy. Surely there is 
some one about your plant who can be relied upon to 
analyze the gas taken by the Collectors. If the man to 
whom that work is entrusted is under suspicion a trap can 
easily be set for him and if he is guilty he will step into it. 

I was asked for advice not long ago by a plant Manager. 
He was uncertain whether to buy Collectors or Recorders. 
I stated the pros and cons of it much as I have stated them 
in this chapter. He said, "We are wasting so much fuel 
that we can afford to do this thing right. I shall buy a 
Recorder for each boiler. , ' Another Manager after a sim- 
ilar interview decided in favor of the Collectors, because he 
found that he could equip each of his ten boilers with Col- 
lectors at the cost of equipping a single boiler with a 
Recorder. 

It is very largely a matter of choice whether you adopt 
Collectors or Recorders, and I have tried to set forth the 
facts as I see them in order that you may have the data upon 
which to base your choice. 

The reader will understand that in my discussion of the 
apparatus required for combustion analysis I am not depre- 
ciating any related apparatus by my failure to mention it. 
Water meters and steam flow meters have their uses in the 



120 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

boiler room. The same may be said of recording pyrome- 
ters and other apparatus. The further such apparatus goes 
in the analysis of conditions and the location of causes the 
more reason there is for its presence. 

The feed water meter and steam flow meter talk about 
capacity without relation to efficiency, while the C0 2 Re- 
corder talks about efficiency without relation to capacity. 
There is no way that the one form of apparatus can be 
substituted for the other. Some men, however, are so vio- 
lently partisan as to claim that such substitution can be 
made. It is even claimed that an arrangement of pryome- 
ters showing the temperature drop between the furnace 
and the uptake may be substituted for everything else that I 
have mentioned. All such claims as these are absurd and 
instead of boosting any particular apparatus, they hurt all 
apparatus. It is better to stick to facts, especially' when the 
facts are so patent. 

I have included a thermometer or pyrometer for measur- 
ing the temperature of the escaping gases among the desir- 
able testing apparatus of the boiler room. It will give you 
more information on boiler efficiency than on furnace ef- 
ficiency. For this reason I have said very little about 
temperatures in connection with the flue gases. When we 
have done all that it is possible to do to secure economical 
combustion it is then up to the boiler to take the heat energy 
handed to it. The furnace must not rob the boiler by turn- 
ing cold air into the gases or by sending combustible gas. 
up the chimney. When the furnace can show that it has 
discharged its functions properly, the boiler is responsible 
for any excess temperature that the escaping gases may 
show. The temperature should not be more than 100 de- 
grees Fahrenheit above that of the steam in the boiler. 

Take your flue gas temperatures at the point where the 
gases leave the heating surfaces of the boiler, as I have al- 
ready advised. I sometimes hear engineers boasting about 
extremely low stack temperatures and in almost every case 
of this kind I have found that the temperatures were taken 
in the breeching or at some other improper point. 

And now let me briefly recapitulate the steps that you 
must take to substitute economy for the waste that is ruling 
your boiler room. 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 121 

First, you must get yourself "under conviction of your 
sins," as the revivalist would express it. You must really 
want all of the economy that is coming to you and deter- 
mine to get it. 

Second, you must "diagnose" your waste troubles and dis- 
cover the remedies called for. 

Third, you must make the firemen understand what is 
expected of them and they must be convinced that your 
contentions are right. If the fireman does not agree with 
you on any subject relating to the management of the fires 
you must convince him that you are right and he is wrong. 
This is easy. 

In a big Eastern power plant there is a negro fireman who 
rejoices in the nickname of "Happy." He was persuaded 
that he was some fireman and it would have been impossible 
to argue him out of that hallucination. The Chief Engi- 
neer had tried arguments without success. He decided to 
give "Happy" an object lesson and as the man was looked 
upon as an expert by the other negro firemen the Chief 
considered the object lesson as of sufficient importance to 
warrant a couple of evaporative tests. 

A ten-hour test was run with "Happy" as fireman and 
he was instructed to do his "darndest" as they were trying 
for a record. The man was allowed to fire in his own way 
and he was a tired man at the end of the day. 

On the following morning the Chief Engineer said: 
"Happy, we are going to run another test today and you 
are going to fire again. You fired your way yesterday and 
today you are going to fire my way. I shall stay with you 
and you will fire exactly as I say. We will not stop the 
test until we have evaporated as much water as we did 
yesterday." 

The test was conducted under this arrangement and it 
was concluded at the end of nine hours. The Chief then 
pointed to the large pile of coal that was left and said, 
"Happy, what would you think of a fireman who would 
steal that amount of coal from his employer?" "Why," 
said Happy, "Ah nevah stole no coal from this company. 
Ah nevah stole no coal from nobody." "I know it," said 
the Chief, "but you have wasted coal every day and wasting 



122 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 

coal is worse than stealing it, because nobody gets any use 
of fuel that is wasted. We evaporated as much water 
today as we evaporated yesterday. We have an hour to 
spare and as much coal to spare as you see lying on the 
floor." "Is you sure about the evaporation?" said "Hap- 
py." "Why Ah worked like a niggah yesterday and today 
Ah hardly worked at all. Ah didn't suppose the boiler was 
doing anything." "Happy" was convinced and ready to 
take instructions where before he would accept instructions 
from nobody. Today he is said to be one of the most 
expert firemen in the city of Pittsburgh. 

It is not necessary to run an evaporative test to give your 
fireman an object lesson. You can give very convincing 
lessons with the "spotting" apparatus I have mentioned. 

For the fourth step you must institute a checking system 
in your plant as already suggested and the fifth and final 
step is taken when the incentive for ultimate effort is given 
by a bonus system, or otherwise. 

I have never known a bonus system to fail of the most 
gratifying results. I know of nothing upon which you can 
base a more equitable bonus system than the C0 2 averages. 
From the tables given you can arrange a bonus schedule to 
suit yourself. Make your firemen stockholders in your 
economy enterprise and they will w r ork their shirts off to 
earn dividends. And as a gratifying by-product of your 
bonus system, your firemen will be anchored to your plant. 
You know what it means to have firemen quit when firemen 
are hard to get. 

I have talked with the Managers of many plants where 
bonus systems are in force and I have yet to find one who is 
dissatisfied with the results. The firemen are always happy. 
In most cases the rule is to distribute about one tenth of the 
money saved among the men saving it, the distribution to be 
pro-rata according to each man's efficiency. The savings are 
figured from the C0 2 percentages. In some cases these per- 
centages are checked by the coal and kilowatt records. When 
the figures fail to check it is assumed that something is wrong 
with the boilers proper or that something requires attention in 
the engine room. When the C0 2 reports are right it is known 
that the firemen and the furnaces are not to blame for any 



Hozv to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 123 

slip in efficiency that may be indicated by the coal and kilo- 
watt records. 

The Manager of a plant on the Texas border, who employs 
Mexicans as firemen, writes as follows: 

"I offer each man a bonus of five per cent of the fuel that 
he can save and the effect has been magical. The men come 
to me and in their broken English try to explain how hard 
they are trying to carry out my instructions. 

Each man received a bonus of $3.75 the first month, $2.50 
the second month, $3.30 the third and $7.80 the fourth. The 
plant w T as only running half the time the first three months 
and from all indications the bonus will be from seven to ten 
dollars per month in the future. 

In four months each man had received $17.35 extra pay 
and the fuel account was benefitted by a saving of $312.30, 
which was all Velvet* as no money had been invested by the 
company to accomplish the saving. 

After this experience I firmly believe that this is the only 
way to handle firemen. It is simply a case of deciding 
whether the money is to be given to the fuel dealer or divided 
between the men and the company." 

An Eastern plant adopted the bonus system and saved 30 
per cent on its fuel the first year. The men were paid 10 per 
cent of the saving effected, leaving the company a net saving 
of 27 per cent with no investment whatever except the small 
amount required for C0 2 apparatus. 

The bonus schedule in force in this plant is as follows : 



Per cent CO, 


Premium per day 


12 


$0.75 


11.5 


.70 


11 


.65 


10.5 


.60 


10 


.55 


9.5 


.50 


9 


.45 


8.5 


.40 


8 


.35 ■ 


7.5 


.30 


7. 


.25 ' 


6.5 


.20 


6 


.15 



124 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



The Manager of another Eastern factory writes me as 
follows concerning his bonus system: 

"In order to get the very best results and the most econom- 
ical method of firing we are paying a bonus to the fireman 
who is on watch from 4 A. M. to 12 Noon and from 12 
Noon to 8 P. M. on all days when the factory is in full opera- 
tion. We pay bonus as follows: 

For 10% C0 2 , 10c; for 11%, 15c; for 12%, 25c; and for 
13%, 40c. In addition to this we pay $2.00 extra each 
month to the fireman making the highest average the month. 

In order to show you what we are doing I enclose here- 
with a copy of our record for the month of June. 



2 


12. 


3 


10.6 


4 


10. 


5 


11.1 


6 


11.6 


7 


8 


9 


10 


11 


12 


13 


14 


15 


16 


12.3 


17 


10.8 


18 


12.2 


19 


12. 


20 


12.2 


21 


12. 


22 


23 


12.2 


24 


13. 


25 


12. 


26 


11.6 


27 


11.6 


28 


29 


30 


31 


Totals 

Averages. .... 


187.2 

11.7 



RECORD OF C0 2 PERCENTAGE 

Month of June, 1913. 
FIREMEN. 
C0 2 % Bonus C0 2 % Bonus 
C. O. Bolin Jno. Zigalinski 



.25 
.10 
.10 
.15 
.15 



C0 2 % Bonus 
Peter Rynice 



11.2 

11. 

10.2 

10.4 

11. 

10.6 



.25 
.10 
.25 
.25 

.25 
.25 

'.'25 
.40 
.25 
.15 
.15 



$3.30 



12. 

11.6 

12. 

13.2 

12.9 

12.4 

12^7 

12.8 

12. 

11.6 

12.4 



.25 
.15 
.25 
.40 
.25 
.25 

"25 
.25 
.25 
.15 
.25 



12. 
12. 
12. 
12. 
11. 



12, 
11 
11 
11 
11. 
11 



12.4 



148. 
12.3 



$2 



Jno. Zigalinski, extra bonus for best average, 



.25 
'.95 
$2.00. 



12.7 



208, 
11. 



8 $3 
6 



We employ three firemen and one only is on watch at a 
time which is 8 hours on watch and 16 hours off. On Sun- 
days the length of the watch is changed so that the same man 



How to Keep the Wastes Stopped. 125 

will not always be on the same watch. We are burning at 
this time of the year about 12 tons Bit. coal every 24 hours, 
the cost of same is $3.35 per ton in the bin and since we 
started to pay bonus the percentage of C0 2 is higher and 
we know that our firemen are doing the best they can to get 
the best result, and we also know that by the bonus system 
and the regular use of C0 2 apparatus we have reduced the 
coal consumption in our boiler room." 

The daily "Records of Operation" should cover, when 
possible, all of the items shown on the following chart : 







RECORDS OF OPERATION 

Drltfi 






WATCH 


FIREMEN 


COAL 


TOTAL 


ASH 


TOTAL 


co z 


AVGE 


DRAFT 


STACK 
TEMP 


FEED\ 
EHTER 


VATER 
LEAVE 


WATER 
EVAPORATED 




1 












































































2 












































































3 












































































TOTALS ^AVERAGES 
























Rem, 


ARKS 


























OPERA TING E NG INEER 



The things that I have suggested in this book may mean 
a little initial expense to the management. They cannot 
mean much and it is just a question whether you will spend 
a little money for the apparatus that your engineer needs 
or give a great deal of money to the coal dealer. They mean 
a little extra trouble for the engineer, but a reasonable 
amount of trouble is a good thing for an engineer. It keeps 
him from brooding on being an engineer. I have adapted 
this statement from David Harum. 



126 How to Build Up Furnace Efficiency. 



Showing about how the temperatures 

drop in the boiler passes when the 

heating surfaces are clean. 




The only heat that 

counts is the heat 

that gets into the 

WATER 



'•': 



